Madame Maigret's Friend

by Georges Simenon

  ‘How long were you at the bookbinder’s?’

  ‘A quarter of an hour at the most.’

  ‘Did you see his wife?’

  ‘I think at one point she stuck her head out above the stairs.’

  ‘Did Steuvels tell you anything in confidence?’

  ‘No. I’m ready to give you my word.’

  ‘One more question, maître. Since when has Alfonsi been working for you?’

  ‘He doesn’t work for me. He has a private detective agency.’

  ‘With himself as the only employee!’

  ‘That’s none of my business. To defend my client with any chance of success, I need certain information I can’t exactly gather myself.’

  ‘Above all, you needed to find out how much I knew day by day.’

  ‘All’s fair in love and war, isn’t it?’

  At the cash desk, the telephone rang. The cashier picked up the receiver.

  ‘Just a moment. I don’t know. I’ll check.’

  As she was opening her mouth to give the waiter a name, Maigret stood up. ‘Is it for me?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Maigret.’

  ‘Do you want me to put it through to the booth?’

  ‘There’s no need, it’ll only take a few seconds.’ It was the call he’d been expecting from Lapointe. The young man’s voice was shaking with emotion.

  ‘Is that you, sir? I have it!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I didn’t find anything at the lawyer’s, where I was almost caught by the concierge. As you told me to, I then went to Rue de Douai. Everybody goes in and out there, so it was easy. I had no difficulty opening the door. The suitcase was under the bed. What should I do?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the tobacconist’s on the corner of Rue de Douai.’

  ‘Take a taxi back to the Quai. I’ll see you there.’

  ‘OK, chief. Are you pleased?’ Carried away by his enthusiasm and pride, he had allowed himself, for the first time, to use the word ‘chief’. But he still needed reassurance.

  ‘You did a good job.’

  Liotard was watching Maigret anxiously. Maigret resumed his seat on the banquette with a satisfied sigh, and signalled to the waiter.

  ‘Another beer. And maybe you could bring a fine for monsieur.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Don’t worry, son.’

  That word was enough to alert Liotard.

  ‘You see, it’s not the Bar Council I’m going to talk to about you. It’s the public prosecutor. Tomorrow morning, it’s quite likely I’ll ask him for two arrest warrants, one in your name, and one for your associate Alfonsi.’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘What will you get for that, a conviction for receiving stolen goods in a murder case? I’ll have to check in the penal code. I need to think about it. Can I leave you to settle the bill?’

  Already standing, he leaned over Philippe Liotard’s shoulder and added softly, confidentially:

  ‘I have the suitcase!’

  9.

  The Dieppe Photograph

  Maigret had already called the judge’s office once, about half past nine, and spoken to the clerk.

  ‘Could you ask Judge Dossin if he can see me?’

  ‘He’s right here.’

  ‘Anything new?’ the judge had asked. ‘I mean apart from what the press is saying this morning?’

  He was in a very excited state. The morning papers carried the news of the discovery of the chocolate-brown car and the body of the old woman in Lagny.

  ‘I think so. I’m coming to tell you about it.’

  But since then, whenever Maigret had headed for the door of his office, something had delayed him: a phone call, the arrival of an inspector with something to report. Discreetly, the judge had called back and asked Lucas, ‘Is the detective chief inspector still there?’

  ‘Yes. Shall I put you through to him?

  ‘No. I suppose he’s busy. I’m sure he’ll come upstairs in a while.’

  • • •

  At a quarter past ten, he had finally made up his mind to call Maigret.

  ‘Sorry to bother you. I imagine you’re snowed under. But I’ve summoned Frans Steuvels for eleven o’clock, and I wouldn’t like to start the interrogation without seeing you first.’

  ‘Would it bother you if I brought someone else in?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His wife, probably. If you don’t mind, I’ll have her fetched by an inspector just in case.’

  ‘Do you want an official summons?’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’

  Judge Dossin waited another ten minutes, intending to study the file. At last, there was a knock at his door. He almost rushed to it and saw Maigret standing there with a suitcase in his hand.

  ‘Are you going away?’

  Maigret’s smile informed him otherwise, and he murmured, unable to believe his eyes, ‘Is that the suitcase?’

  ‘It’s heavy, I can tell you that.’

  ‘So we were right?’

  He was relieved of a great weight. Philippe Liotard’s systematic campaign had worn him down in the end. After all, it was he who had taken responsibility for keeping Steuvels in prison.

  ‘Is he guilty?’

  ‘Guilty enough to be put inside for a few years.’

  Maigret had known the contents of the suitcase since the previous evening, but he went through them again, with the same pleasure as a child laying out his Christmas gifts.

  What weighed down this brown suitcase, its handle repaired with string, were pieces of metal that looked rather like a bookbinder’s stamps, but were actually the seals of various countries.

  In particular there was a seal from the United States, and seals from all the countries of South America.

  There were also rubber stamps such as those used in town halls and government offices, all laid out as neatly as a salesman’s samples.

  ‘This is Steuvels’ work,’ Maigret explained. ‘His brother Alfred provided him with the moulds and the blank passports. As far as I’ve been able to judge from these examples, the passports aren’t forgeries, they’ve actually been stolen from consulates.’

  ‘Had they been doing this for a long time?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Roughly two years, according to the bank accounts. This morning, I put calls through to most of the banks in Paris. That’s partly what stopped me coming up to see you earlier.’

  ‘Steuvels has his account in the Société Générale in Rue Saint-Antoine, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He has another account in an American bank on Place Vendôme, and another still in an English bank on the boulevard. So far, we’ve found five different accounts. It started two years ago, which corresponds with the time his brother came back to Paris.’

  It was raining. The weather was grey and mild. Maigret was sitting by the window, smoking his pipe.

  ‘You see, your honour, Alfred Moss isn’t a professional villain. Professionals have a speciality which they keep to most of the time. I’ve never seen a pickpocket taking up burglary, or a burglar passing false cheques or becoming a con man.

  ‘Alfred Moss was a clown to start with, an acrobat.

  ‘It was after a fall that he became a criminal. Unless I’m very much mistaken, he did his first job by chance. Thanks to his knowledge of languages, he’d been hired as an interpreter in a big hotel in London. T
he opportunity presented itself to steal some jewellery and he did so.

  ‘He lived off that for a while. Not for very long, because he has a vice, something else I only found out about this morning, thanks to the manager of the local betting shop: he plays the horses.

  ‘Like any amateur, he didn’t keep to one kind of theft, he tried everything.

  ‘He was unusually skilful. Lucky too, because he was never convicted.

  ‘He had his highs and lows. One day he passed a false cheque, the next he played a con trick.

  ‘As he got older, he saw himself discredited in most capital cities, blacklisted from the big hotels where he used to operate.’

  ‘Is that when he remembered his brother?’

  ‘Yes. Two years ago, gold smuggling, which was his previous activity, stopped bringing in much income. False passports, on the other hand, especially for America, were starting to reach astronomic sums. He told himself that a bookbinder, accustomed to making coats of arms with blocking stamps, would probably make a decent job of official seals.’

  ‘What surprises me is that Steuvels agreed to it. He doesn’t need the money. Unless he has a double life we haven’t discovered.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a double life. Poverty, real poverty, the kind he knew in his childhood and adolescence, produces two kinds of people: spendthrifts and misers. Mostly misers, who are so afraid of the bad old days coming back that they’re capable of anything to ensure against them.

  ‘If I’m not mistaken, that’s the case with Steuvels. The list of banks where he’s made deposits is evidence of that. I’m convinced it wasn’t a way of hiding his assets, because it never even occurred to him that he might be found out. But he was suspicious of banks, nationalizations, devaluations, so he put small sums in different establishments.’

  ‘I thought he practically never left his wife.’

  ‘That’s correct. She was the one who left him. It took me a while to discover it. Every Monday afternoon, she’s been going to the Vert-Galant laundry boat to do her washing. Almost every Monday, Moss arrived with his suitcase, and whenever he was early he’d wait in the Tabac des Vosges for his sister-in-law to leave.

  ‘The two brothers had the afternoon to themselves to work. The tools and the passports never stayed in Rue de Turenne. Moss would take them away with him.

  ‘Some Mondays, Steuvels still had time to rush to one of his banks and make a deposit.’

  ‘I don’t see where the young woman with the boy comes in, or the countess, or—’

  ‘I’m coming to that, your honour. The reason I’ve talked first about the suitcase is because that’s what bothered me most, right from the start. But since I heard about Moss and suspected what he was up to, another question has been uppermost in my thoughts.

  ‘Why, when the gang had been keeping their heads down, was there a sudden stir on Tuesday, March 12th, which ended with them all scattering?

  ‘I’m talking about the incident in Square d’Anvers, which my wife just happened to witness.

  ‘The previous day, Moss was still living quietly in his room on Boulevard Pasteur.

  ‘Levine and the child were staying at the Hôtel Beauséjour, where Gloria came every day to take the child out for a walk.

  ‘But that Tuesday, at about ten in the morning, Moss goes to the Hôtel Beauséjour where, presumably as a precaution, he’s never before set foot.

  ‘Levine immediately packs his bags, rushes to Place d’Anvers and attracts the attention of Gloria, who leaves the child high and dry and follows him.

  ‘By the afternoon, they’ve all vanished without a trace.

  ‘So what happened on the morning of March 12th?

  ‘Moss didn’t receive a phone call, because there’s no telephone in the apartment where he was living.

  ‘At that point, my inspectors and I hadn’t done anything that might have frightened the gang. We didn’t know about them.

  ‘As for Frans Steuvels, he was in the Santé.

  ‘But something did happen.

  ‘It was only last night, when I got home, that quite by chance I found the answer to that question.’

  Judge Dossin was so relieved to know that the man he had put in prison was not innocent that he smiled ecstatically as he listened to Maigret, as if listening to a fascinating story.

  ‘My wife spent the evening waiting for me and took advantage of it to do something she’s been doing for a while now. Every now and again, she puts press cuttings about me into exercise books. She’s been particularly keen on doing that since a former director of the Police Judiciaire published his memoirs.

  ‘When I tease her about it, she always says, “You may well write yours one day, when you retire and we’re living in the country.”

  ‘Anyway, when I got back last night, the pot of glue and the scissors were on the table. As I took my things off, I happened to glance over my wife’s shoulder, and in one of the cuttings she was about to put in, I saw a photograph I’d forgotten.

  ‘It was taken three years ago, by a young reporter in Normandy: my wife and I were spending a few days in Dieppe, and he caught us in the doorway of our boarding house.

  ‘What surprised me was seeing that photograph on a page from a magazine.

  ‘“Haven’t you read it? It appeared quite recently: a four-page article about your early years and your methods.”

  ‘There were other photographs, including one where I was a secretary in a local police station and had a long moustache.

  ‘“When does it date from?”

  ‘“The article? Last week. I didn’t have time to show it to you. You’re almost never at home these days.”

  ‘To cut a long story short, the article appeared in a Parisian weekly which went on sale on the morning of Tuesday, March 12th.

  ‘I immediately sent someone to the people who were still putting up Moss at that date, and got confirmation that the younger of the girls had brought up the magazine at about 8.30, at the same time as the milk, and that Moss had glanced at it while having his breakfast.

  ‘From that point on, everything becomes simple. It even explains why Gloria spent so much time on that bench in Square d’Anvers.

  ‘After those two murders and the arrest of Steuvels, the gang had scattered and were in hiding. Levine probably changed hotels several times before ending up in Rue Lepic. As a precaution, he was never seen outside with Gloria, and they even avoided sleeping in the same place.

  ‘Every morning, Moss had to go to Square d’Anvers to get news. All he had to do was sit on the end of the bench.

  ‘Now as you know, my wife sat on the same bench three or four times while waiting to see the dentist. The two women had made each other’s acquaintance and got chatting. Moss had probably seen Madame Maigret, but hadn’t paid any attention to her.

  ‘Imagine his reaction on discovering, through the magazine, that the good lady on the bench was none other than the wife of the inspector in charge of the investigation!

  ‘He couldn’t imagine it was coincidence, could he? He quite naturally assumed we were on his trail and that I’d given my wife a role in the investigation.

  ‘He rushed to Rue Lepic and alerted Levine, who then ran to warn Gloria.’

  ‘Why did they argue?’

  ‘Maybe because of the boy. Maybe Levine didn’t want Gloria to go back for him and run the risk of being arrested. She insisted she wanted to go back, but that she’d take as many precautions as possible.

  ‘Which incl
ines me to think, by the way, that they won’t be together when we eventually track them down. They probably think we know about Gloria and the boy, but don’t know anything about Levine. He and Moss must have gone their separate ways.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever get your hands on them?’

  ‘Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a year. You know how these things are.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me where you discovered the suitcase.’

  ‘You might prefer not to know how we came into its possession. The fact is, I was forced to use a not very legal method, for which I take full responsibility, but of which you may not approve.

  ‘All you need to know is that it was Liotard who relieved Steuvels of the compromising suitcase.

  ‘For one reason or another, Moss took the suitcase to Rue de Turenne that Saturday night and left it there.

  ‘Frans Steuvels simply pushed it under a table in his workshop, thinking nobody would notice it.

  ‘On February 21st, Lapointe showed up under a pretext and visited the premises.

  ‘Don’t forget, Steuvels couldn’t reach his brother, or anybody in the gang I imagine, to bring them up to date. I think I know what happened next.

  ‘He must have been wondering how to get rid of the suitcase, probably waiting for it to get dark before he dealt with it, when Liotard, whom he’d never heard of, showed up.’

  ‘How did Liotard find out?’

  ‘Through an indiscretion in my department.’

  ‘One of your inspectors?’

  ‘I don’t blame him for it, and it’s unlikely to happen again. Anyway, Liotard offered his services, more services in fact than might be expected from a member of the bar, since he took the suitcase away.’