Madame Maigret's Friend

by Georges Simenon

  ‘It fell into the Marne a month ago?’

  ‘From what I could understand, yes. The sergeant I had on the phone was so intent on explaining in as much detail as possible, I couldn’t follow any of it by the end. Plus, he kept mentioning all these names as if I knew them, as if he was talking about Jesus Christ or Pasteur. But the one he mentioned most was old Madame Hébart or Hobart, who gets drunk every night, but who’s apparently incapable of making things up.

  ‘Anyway, this all happened about a month ago …’

  ‘Did he tell you the exact date?’

  ‘February 15th.’

  Maigret consulted the chronology he’d put together, proud that it was coming in useful.

  15 February. The Countess Panetti leaves Claridge’s with her maid, Gloria Lotti, in her son-in-law Krynker’s chocolate-brown Chrysler.

  ‘I thought of that. Like I said, it sounds genuine. So, this old woman, who lives in an isolated house by the river and rents boats to anglers in the summer, went to have a drink in the local tavern, as she does every evening. On her way home, she claims she heard a loud noise in the darkness, and she’s sure it was the noise of a car falling into the Marne.

  ‘The water level was high at the time. There’s a little path that branches off from the main road and stops at the edge of the water. It would have been muddy, and probably slippery.’

  ‘Did she tell the gendarmerie straight away?’

  ‘No, she mentioned it at the café the next day. The news took a while to spread. One of the gendarmes finally heard about it and questioned her.

  ‘The gendarmes went to have a look, but the banks were partly submerged and the current was so strong that navigation had to be interrupted for several days. Apparently, it’s only now that the level’s getting more or less back to normal.

  ‘Basically, I don’t think they took the thing seriously at all.

  ‘Yesterday, after getting our appeal about the brown car, they had a phone call from somebody who lives on the corner of the main road and the path, and who claims that one night last month he saw a car that colour turn in front of his house.

  ‘He sells petrol, and was just filling up a customer’s car, which explains why he was outside at that hour.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘Just after nine.’

  It doesn’t take two hours to get to Lagny from the Champs-Élysées, but obviously there was nothing to stop Krynker from having made a detour.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘The gendarmerie asked the Highways Department for a crane.’

  ‘This was yesterday?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon. A lot of people gathered to watch. They did hook something in the evening, but then darkness fell and they had to stop. I was even told the name of the hole, because all the holes in the riverbed are known by anglers and local people. There’s even one that’s ten metres deep.’

  ‘Did they fish out the car?’

  ‘This morning. Sure enough, it’s a chocolate-brown Chrysler, with an Alpes-Maritimes licence number. That’s not all. There’s a body inside.’

  ‘A man’s body?’

  ‘A woman’s. It’s very decomposed. Most of the clothes were torn off by the current. The hair is long and grey.’

  ‘The Countess?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’ve only just found the body. It’s still on the bank, under a tarpaulin, and they’re asking what they should do. I told them I’d call them back.’

  Moers had left a few minutes earlier. He would have been useful to Maigret right now, and there wasn’t much chance they would find him at home.

  ‘Do you want to call Dr Paul?’

  Paul answered himself.

  ‘Are you busy? Do you have any plans for today? Would you mind if I came and picked you up and took you to Lagny? With your kit, yes. No, it’s not likely to be pretty. An old woman who’s been in the Marne for a month.’

  Maigret looked around him and saw Lapointe blush and turn his head away. He was clearly dying to go with his chief.

  ‘Don’t you have a girlfriend to see this afternoon?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir!’

  ‘Can you drive?’

  ‘I’ve had a licence for two years.’

  ‘Go and fetch the blue Peugeot and wait for me downstairs. Make sure there’s petrol in it.’ And to Janvier, who was looking disappointed: ‘Take another car and drive there slowly, questioning garage owners, innkeepers, whoever you like. It’s possible someone else noticed the brown car. I’ll see you in Lagny.’

  He had another glass of beer. A few minutes later, Dr Paul appeared, with his merry beard, and got into the car that Lapointe was proudly driving.

  ‘Shall I take the shortest route?’

  ‘Preferably, young man.’

  It was one of the first fine days and there were a lot of cars on the road, filled with families.

  Dr Paul told anecdotes about post-mortems, which, in his mouth, became as funny as Jewish jokes or tall tales.

  In Lagny, they had to ask for directions, leave the town itself and make a long detour before they came to a bend in the river where a crane stood, surrounded by at least a hundred people. The gendarmes were having as much difficulty controlling the crowds as if the fair was on. The lieutenant of gendarmes seemed relieved when he recognized Maigret.

  There, lying across the embankment, was the chocolate-brown car, covered in mud, grass and all kinds of unidentifiable detritus, water still gushing from every crevice. The bodywork was twisted, one of the windows was broken and the two headlights were shattered, but, remarkably, one door was still in working order, and it was through this that the body had been removed.

  The body itself formed a little heap under a tarpaulin, and those bystanders who approached it found themselves retching.

  ‘I’ll let you work, doctor.’

  ‘Here?’

  Dr Paul would have been happy to do so. He had been known to do post-mortems in the unlikeliest places, an inevitable cigarette in his mouth, even stopping and taking off his rubber gloves to have a bite to eat.

  ‘Can you take the body to the gendarmerie, lieutenant?’

  ‘My men will deal with it. Get back, you others. And the children! Who’s letting children come so close?’

  Maigret was examining the car when an old woman pulled him by the sleeve and said proudly, ‘It was me who found her.’

  ‘Are you the widow Hébart?’

  ‘Hubart, monsieur. The house over there behind the ash trees is mine.’

  ‘Tell me what you saw.’

  ‘Strictly speaking, I didn’t see anything, but I heard. I was coming back along the towpath. That’s where we are now.’

  ‘Had you been drinking a lot?’

  ‘Just two or three little glasses.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Fifty metres further on, nearer to my house. I heard a car coming from the main road. I thought it must have been poachers again. Because it was too cold for lovers, and it was raining. When I turned round, all I saw was the headlights.

  ‘How was I supposed to know it was going to be important one day? I carried on walking, and I had the impression the car had stopped.’

  ‘Because you couldn’t hear the engine any more?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You had your back to the path?’

  ‘Yes. Then I heard the engine again, and I thought the car was making a U-turn. But it did
n’t! Immediately afterwards, there was a big splash, and when I turned round, the car wasn’t there any more.’

  ‘You didn’t hear anybody screaming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t retrace your steps?’

  ‘Should I have? What could I have done all by myself? It had upset me. I thought the poor people must have drowned, and I rushed home to have a stiff drink to recover.’

  ‘You didn’t stay on the riverbank?’

  ‘No, monsieur.’

  ‘And you didn’t hear anything else after the splash?’

  ‘I thought I heard something like footsteps, but I thought it was a rabbit that had been startled by the noise.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s enough? If they’d listened to me instead of calling me a mad old woman, that lady would have been out of the water a long time ago. Did you see her?’

  Not without a grimace of disgust, Maigret imagined this old woman contemplating the other old woman in her decomposed state.

  Did the widow Hubart realize that she was only alive by a miracle, and that, if she had been curious enough to turn back that famous night, she might well have followed the other woman into the Marne?

  ‘Will there be reporters here?’

  It was the reporters she was waiting for, because she wanted to have her picture in the papers.

  Lapointe emerged, covered in mud, from the Chrysler, which he had been examining. ‘I didn’t find anything,’ he said. ‘The tools are in their place in the boot, with the spare tyre. There’s no luggage, not even a handbag. There was only a woman’s shoe jammed in the bottom of the seat and, in the dashboard box, this pair of gloves and this torch.’

  The gloves were pigskin – men’s gloves, as far as it was still possible to judge.

  ‘Go to the railway station. Someone must have taken the train that evening. Unless there are taxis in the town. Join me at the gendarmerie.’

  He preferred to wait in the courtyard, smoking his pipe, until Dr Paul, who had been installed in the garage, had finished his work.

  8.

  The Family with the Toys

  ‘Are you disappointed, sir?’

  Young Lapointe really would have liked to call him ‘chief’, like Lucas, Torrence, and most of those in the team, but he felt too new for that. It seemed to him a privilege he had to acquire, like earning your stripes.

  They had just driven Dr Paul home and were on their way back to the Quai des Orfèvres. Paris seemed even more filled with light after the hours spent wading in the darkness of Lagny. From the Pont Saint-Michel, Maigret could see lights in his own office.

  ‘No, I’m not disappointed. I wasn’t expecting the staff at the station to remember travellers whose tickets they punched a month ago.’

  ‘I was wondering what you were thinking about?’

  He replied quite naturally, ‘The suitcase.’

  ‘I swear to you it was in the workshop when I went to the bookbinder’s that first time.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that.’

  ‘And I’m certain it wasn’t the suitcase Sergeant Lucas found in the basement in the afternoon.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that either. Leave the car in the courtyard and come upstairs.’

  It was clear from how animated the few men on duty were that there was news, and as soon as Lucas heard Maigret come in he threw open the door of his office.

  ‘Information about Moss, chief. A young girl and her father came here earlier. They wanted to speak to you personally, but after waiting nearly two hours they finally made up their minds to give me the message. The girl’s about sixteen or seventeen, very pretty, very round and pink, and looks people straight in the eyes. The father’s a sculptor who once, if I understood correctly, won the Prix de Rome. There’s another girl, who’s a bit older, and a mother. They live on Boulevard Pasteur, where they make toys. Unless I’m mistaken, the girl came with her father to stop him drinking on the way, it seems to be his little weakness. He wears a big black hat and a floppy tie. Moss has been staying in their apartment for the past few months, under the name Peeters.’

  ‘Is he still there?’

  ‘If he were, I’d already have sent some inspectors to arrest him, or rather, I’d have gone there myself. He left them on March 12th.’

  ‘In other words, the day Levine, Gloria and the child vanished into thin air after the scene in Square d’Anvers.’

  ‘He didn’t tell them he was leaving. He went out in the morning as usual, and hasn’t set foot in the apartment since. I thought you’d prefer to question them yourself. Oh, another thing. Philippe Liotard has already phoned twice.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘To speak to you. If you came back before eleven tonight, he wanted you to call him at the Chope du Nègre.’

  A brasserie Maigret knew, on Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle.

  ‘Give me the Chope!’

  It was the cashier who answered. She had Liotard fetched to the phone.

  ‘Is that you, inspector? I suppose you must be snowed under with work. Did you find him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Moss. I went to the cinema this afternoon, and I understood. Don’t you think a man-to-man talk, strictly off the record, might be useful to both of us?’

  It happened by chance. A little earlier, in the car, Maigret had been thinking about the suitcase. Now, just as Liotard was speaking to him, young Lapointe came into the office.

  ‘Are you with friends?’ Maigret asked Liotard.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. When you get here, I won’t sit with them any more.’

  ‘Your girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘Someone you don’t like very much, I don’t know why. He’s very upset about it.’

  In other words, Alfonsi. There must be four of them again, the two men and their girlfriends.

  ‘I’ll be there, but I might be late. Will you wait for me?’

  ‘I’ll wait as long as you like. It’s Sunday.’

  ‘Tell Alfonsi I’d like to see him too.’

  ‘He’ll be delighted.’

  ‘See you later, then.’

  Maigret motioned to Lapointe, who had been discreetly trying to leave, that he should stay, and then went and closed both doors of his office.

  ‘Come here. Sit down. You really want to do well in the police, don’t you?’

  ‘It matters more to me than anything else.’

  ‘You were stupid enough to talk too much on the first day, and you still have no idea what that’s led to.’

  ‘I’m really sorry. I genuinely trusted my sister.’

  ‘Would you like to do something difficult for me? Hold on, don’t answer too quickly. I’m not talking about something spectacular that’ll get your name in the papers. On the contrary. If you succeed, only the two of us will know about it. If you fail, I’ll be forced to disown you and say you were over-zealous and did something I hadn’t told you to do.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You don’t understand at all, but that doesn’t matter. If I did this thing myself and failed, the whole police force would be implicated. But that won’t happen to you, you’re too new to the organization.’

  Lapointe could hardly contain his impatience.

  ‘Maître Liotard and Alfonsi are at the Chope du Nègre right now, waiting for me.’

  ‘Are you going to join them?’
>
  ‘Not straight away. I want to go to Boulevard Pasteur first, and I’m sure they won’t leave the Chope before I get there. Let’s say I join them in an hour at the earliest. It’s nine o’clock now. You know Liotard’s apartment in Rue Bergère? It’s on the third floor, on the left. As a good few ladies of easy virtue live in the building, the concierge probably doesn’t pay too much attention to people coming and going.’

  ‘You want me to …’

  ‘Yes. You’ve been taught how to open a door. It won’t matter too much if you leave any signs of entry. On the contrary. And there’s no point searching the drawers, or looking through papers. You just have to check one thing: that the suitcase isn’t there.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Well, it’s possible, even likely, that it isn’t there, because Liotard’s a cautious fellow. That’s why you mustn’t waste any time. From Rue Bergère, go to Rue de Douai, where Alfonsi has Room 33 in the Hôtel du Massif Central.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Do the same thing there. The suitcase. Nothing else. Phone me as soon as you’ve finished.’

  ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘Go out into the corridor first. I’m going to lock my door and I want you to try and open it. Ask Lucas for the tools.’

  Lapointe didn’t do too badly, and a few minutes later he rushed out, overjoyed.

  Maigret went into the inspectors’ room. ‘Are you free, Janvier?’

  The telephones were still ringing, but less frantically, because of the hour.

  ‘I was helping Lucas, but …’

  They both went downstairs, and it was Janvier who got in behind the wheel of the police car. A quarter of an hour later, they reached the quietest, most dimly lit part of Boulevard Pasteur, which, in the peace of a beautiful Sunday evening, could have been an avenue in a small town.

  ‘Come up with me.’

  They asked for the sculptor, whose name was Grossot, and were directed to the sixth floor. The building was old, but very decent: it was probably inhabited by minor civil servants. When they knocked at the door on the sixth floor, sounds of an argument came to an abrupt halt, and a round-cheeked young girl opened then stood aside.