Maigret Enjoys Himself

by Georges Simenon

  She even managed to laugh at this. But she soon turned serious again and cast a glance to the other side of the Seine.

  ‘I swear, inspector, that I’m telling you the truth. I know Gilbert. Strange as it may seem, he is shy and very sensitive in the way he deals with women.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘So do you also believe that he didn’t kill her?’

  He chose not to answer but cast a glance in turn at the windows of his office, where Inspector Janvier was having what could be described without hyperbole as the biggest night of his life. The reporters and photographers were waiting in the corridor. The newspapers and the radio had announced that the decisive interrogation was underway.

  Either the Boulevard Haussmann affair would be resolved in the next few hours and Janvier would have won the day or else when morning came the public would feel disappointed and cheated. And not just the general public. Coméliau would be ringing every half-hour from home, in order to keep up with developments.

  ‘Would you excuse me a moment, my dear?’

  He surprised himself calling her that, but it was because he really liked her. If he had had a daughter it wouldn’t have upset him if she had turned out like her. Madame Maigret would have reacted like Martine’s mother, but he would surely have been more like Chapuis.

  He headed to the back of the room.

  ‘Do you have any plain paper and an envelope?’

  ‘Plain is the only sort of paper we have. Use the blotter behind the counter. There is also a bottle of ink and a pen.’

  ‘The boy I spotted earlier washing up in the kitchen, how long has he been working for you?’

  ‘His mother brought him to us three weeks ago. He goes back to school in October. They are poor folk, and he tries to earn a bit of money for them during the holidays.’

  ‘Has Janvier been here in the last three weeks?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him, no. When they want a drink they usually go to the Brasserie Dauphine, because it’s closer.’

  Maigret knew that better than most.

  ‘Don’t let the boy go. I want him to run an errand for me.’

  ‘He’s busy enough for now tidying up the kitchen.’

  Maigret didn’t return to his place but sat down at another table some distance away from Martine Chapuis. On the envelope he wrote:

  FOR THE ATTENTION OF INSPECTOR JANVIER

  VERY URGENT

  From her seat the young woman could see him writing out block capitals and didn’t understand what was going on.

  The message on the sheet was short and sweet:

  JAVE FOUND OUT FROM THE NURSE ON FRIDAY EVENING THAT HIS WIFE WOULD BE COMING TO PARIS

  He went into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked the boy with the dishevelled mop of hair who was stacking the dishes.

  ‘Ernest, inspector.’

  ‘Who told you who I was?’

  ‘No one. I recognized you from your photos.’

  ‘Would you like to do me a favour? You’re not easily intimidated, are you?’

  ‘By you, maybe, but not anyone else.’

  ‘I want you to run over to the Police Judiciaire over there. Do you know it?’

  ‘That large entrance where there is always a policeman on guard?’

  ‘Yes. Give this envelope to the policeman and tell him to take it straight away to Inspector Janvier.’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Just a minute. I haven’t finished. It is possible the policeman will ask you to take it up yourself.’

  ‘Should I do that?’

  ‘Yes. To the first floor. There will be lots of people about. You’ll see an old clerk behind a desk with a chain around his neck.’

  ‘I know what you mean. They have them in banks.’

  ‘Tell him the same thing. If an inspector happens to be nearby, he may ask you some questions. So remember this: you were walking over Pont Saint-Michel when a gentleman gave you five francs to take a letter to the Police Judiciaire.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘And the gentleman was short and thin ...’

  The boy was amused and was eager to be off.

  ‘Short and thin and quite old ...’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur Maigret.’

  ‘That’s all. It would be best if you didn’t come back here afterwards, as they might follow you.’

  ‘Are you playing a joke on them?’

  Maigret simply responded with a smile and went back to sit down opposite the young woman.

  ‘Let’s see what happens.’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I’ve been behaving just like an average reader, the sort who sends messages signed “Someone who knows”.’

  She saw Ernest set off with the letter after a quick word with the landlord and followed him with her eyes as far as Pont Saint-Michel, where he broke into a trot.

  ‘Is this because of what I told you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because of your telephone call?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The landlord and his wife had finished their meal. Their table had been cleared.

  ‘Do you think they’re waiting for us to leave so they can close up?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘They probably have to get up early in the morning.’

  ‘The problem is, if we leave we have nowhere to go.’

  There wasn’t any other café or bar open that had a view of the Police Judiciaire. The boy was talking to the policeman on guard on the other bank. A moment later he was disappearing inside the entrance.

  ‘I thought they’d send him up. The policeman isn’t allowed to leave his post. Unless ...’

  It must have all gone well. Ernest reappeared three or four minutes later and this time headed off in the direction of Pont-Neuf.

  Janvier had received the anonymous letter. Even if he didn’t set great store by it, he wouldn’t fail to at least put one question to Doctor Jave on the subject.

  ‘You don’t seem impatient,’ Martine remarked as he slumped in his seat, staring into the middle distance.

  That was because she didn’t know him. It was the first time that he had experienced this phase of an investigation anywhere other than in his office and he had the same feeling as when he was asking the questions himself.

  He had conducted hundreds of interrogations with all manner of different people. Most of them lasted several hours. Some of them went on, in a cloud of pipe or cigarette smoke, late into the night, and the inspectors sometimes had to work in shifts.

  At headquarters they still talked about an interrogation that had lasted twenty-seven hours. Maigret was almost as exhausted as the man who had eventually confessed.

  Yet, after all these years, the same thing happened every time.

  While the suspect in front of him was still holding out, refusing to talk or lying, it was so to speak a battle of equals, on an almost technical level. He would ask one question after another, making them as unpredictable as possible, and watch out for the faintest flicker on the part of his interlocutor.

  Almost always, sooner or later, the moment came when his resistance would suddenly crack, and Maigret would have him on the ropes. Because at that moment he became a man again, a man who had stolen, murdered, but a man nonetheless, a man who was going to pay the price and knew it, a man for whom this moment marked a definitive break with his past, his friends and family.

  Like an animal about to be put down – yet Maigret had never been able to kill any living creature, even a harmful one – he would nearly always stare at the man who had driven him to a confession with a look of astonishment mingled with reproach.

  ‘That’s exactly what happened ...’ he would murmur, all his energy spent.

  All he felt now was an impatience to sign his statement, sign anything, and go to sleep.

  And how many times had Maigret then taken his bottle of cognac out of the cupboard, not just to offer his victim a drink, but to pour a lar
ge glass for himself?

  He had done his duty as a policeman. He didn’t judge. It wasn’t for him to judge – that was for others to do later, and he preferred it that way.

  Where were they at now, up there behind the lit-up windows of Maigret’s office? Had Jave’s resistance started to crumble, and was Janvier moving in for the kill?

  It was as if the young woman sitting opposite was reading his thoughts.

  ‘It’s strange,’ she murmured. ‘I’d never have believed that Doctor Jave would be capable of that either. He just doesn’t have the look of a murderer.’

  Maigret said nothing. What was the point of explaining that, throughout his career, apart from a handful of professional criminals, he had never encountered any murderer who had the look of one?

  ‘What do I owe you, patron?’

  ‘Paying for both dinners?’

  ‘I insist on paying for my own,’ Martine Chapuis protested.

  He didn’t press it.

  ‘The calvados are on me.’

  ‘If you like.’

  They left together and had barely reached Pont ­Saint-Michel when the landlord pulled the shutters down behind them.

  ‘Are you going over?’

  ‘No. I’ll wait.’

  Fortunately Quai des Orfèvres was not well lit. If they stayed on the pavement nearest the Seine they were in shadow, and the officer on duty would not be able to recognize them.

  ‘Do you think he’ll confess?’

  Maigret simply shrugged his shoulders. He wasn’t God the Father. He had done all he could. Now it was up to Janvier.

  They walked in silence. From a distance they might have been taken for two lovers, or rather a couple out to take the air along the river before heading for bed.

  ‘I’m almost sorry,’ Maigret suddenly muttered, ‘that it wasn’t Négrel.’

  She gave a start and shot him a hard look.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Don’t be upset. I’ve got nothing against Gilbert. Quite the opposite. But if it had been him it could have been an accident. Do you follow?’

  ‘I think I’m beginning to understand.’

  ‘Firstly, your fiancé didn’t have a good enough reason to kill her. Especially since you were quite aware of his relationship with Éveline Jave. Because you were aware, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stopped walking and asked her without looking at her:

  ‘Why are you lying?’

  ‘I’m not lying. That is ...’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I knew because he had confessed to me that he had been seeing her. She had almost forced him into it. I also knew that she was still pursuing him ...’

  ‘But not that she was coming from Cannes to see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor that she had been at his place during the time that you had known him?’

  ‘No. You can see I’m being straight with you. He didn’t talk about it out of sensitivity. It doesn’t change anything, does it?’

  He thought about this for a while.

  ‘Not now. In any case, he had insufficient motive. And, as I said to you just now, if it had been Négrel, it could have been an accident, a mix-up over the phial.’

  ‘Do you still think that’s a possibility?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Jave was already aware on Friday evening that his wife would be flying to Paris on the Saturday. He didn’t come here to see Antoinette. He didn’t miss the plane that Éveline was on. He quite deliberately took the plane to London, and I’m sure he knew the timetable in advance.’

  The windows of his office were still lit up. Two or three times they saw a silhouette move across, probably Janvier, too wound up to stay sitting at Maigret’s desk.

  ‘Do you think that Doctor Jave had sufficient reason?’

  ‘Doesn’t what we’ve learned about Éveline provide sufficient reason?’

  ‘To kill her?’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘What I don’t like,’ he said reluctantly, ‘was that he undressed her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It suggests that he wanted to cast suspicion on someone else.’

  ‘Gilbert?’

  ‘Yes. He thought that he was being clever. Yet, strange though it may seem, it is always the clever ones who get themselves caught. There are some foul crimes committed by some low-life hooligan or other or by some madman that remain unpunished. But a crime by an educated man – never. They try to foresee every eventuality, don’t leave anything to chance. They fiddle with everything. And it is this fiddling, that over-attention to detail, that eventually proves their undoing.

  ‘I am convinced that Jave was in the apartment opposite while his wife was with your fiancé.

  ‘I don’t know what she said to Négrel and, given what I’ve learned about him, I doubt that he will ever tell you either.’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she had told him that she had decided to get a divorce, or even to move in with him straight away.’

  ‘Do you think she loved him?’

  ‘At the very least she had to have a man just for herself. She’d been looking for one for so long. She’d been looking in vain since the age of fourteen ...’

  ‘Was she unhappy?’

  ‘I don’t know. She clung on to him. She tore a button off his jacket.’

  ‘I can’t bear to imagine how it happened.’

  ‘Me neither. Négrel decided to leave. Note that he left at five thirty, even though surgery hours were from two till six. Once he had gone, all Jave had to do was walk across the landing.’

  ‘Stop now.’

  ‘I don’t need to go into the fine detail. I just want to point out that he undressed her afterwards and disposed of the clothes.’

  ‘I understand. Please don’t say any more. But what if they don’t get it, up there?’

  She raised her head towards the illuminated windows.

  ‘Why don’t you go in, inspector? Then it would all be over and done with. I’m sure that you ...’

  It was after midnight. The street was deserted, as was Pont Saint-Michel. There were sounds in the distance, and Maigret could make out several people’s footsteps in the courtyard of the Police Judiciaire.

  Martine stopped and automatically grabbed his arm.

  ‘What is it?’

  He strained to hear, followed the direction of the footsteps. Finally he relaxed.

  ‘Someone being taken off to the cells.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I recognize the creak of the gate.’

  ‘Jave?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  At that moment the lights went out in one of the windows, the one belonging to the inspectors’ room.

  He pulled her back into even deeper shadow, and indeed a few moments later they saw Santoni, Lapointe and Bonfils emerge from the building. Lapointe and Santoni headed towards Pont Saint-Michel, and Bonfils towards Pont-Neuf.

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘It’s over,’ Maigret murmured.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Janvier is briefing the journalists. We’ll see them come out any time now.’

  ‘And the young woman, Antoinette?’

  ‘They’ll keep her in. It’s possible she’ll be charged with conspiracy, since she provided the doctor with an alibi.’

  ‘Her mother too?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Do you think they knew?’

  ‘The thing is, my dear, it’s none of my business, because I’m on holiday. And even if I was in Janvier’s place, I wouldn’t hazard an opinion, because that’s for the jury to decide.’

  ‘Will they release Gilbert?’

  ‘Not until tomorrow morning, because only the examining magistrate is authorized to sign the necessary papers.’

  �
��Will he know by now?’

  ‘He must have realized he had some company in the cells, and I’d swear that he recognized the voices. What’s the matter?’

  She had suddenly started crying, without knowing why.

  ‘I don’t even have a handkerchief ...’ she stammered. ‘How stupid is that? What time tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Not before nine.’

  He had given her his handkerchief and he was still keeping an eye on the entrance to the Police Judiciaire.

  A car zoomed out, a grey car that must have belonged to one of the journalists, but there were five or six of them squashed inside. Two photographers came out on foot and headed for Pont-Neuf.

  There was still a light on in Maigret’s office, but finally that was switched off too.

  ‘Come over here ...’

  They walked a short distance and found an even deeper area of shadow. They heard a car engine turning over inside the courtyard, and then one of the small black police cars emerged.

  ‘It’s OK. He’s on his own,’ Maigret said quietly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Janvier. If he hadn’t succeeded, he would have had Jave driven home or taken him home himself.’

  The black car went off in turn towards Pont-Neuf.

  ‘So there we are, young lady. It’s all over.’

  ‘Thank you, inspector.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For everything.’

  She seemed on the point of crying again. He walked with her towards Pont Saint-Michel.

  ‘No need to give me a lift. I live just opposite.’

  ‘I know. Goodnight.’

  There was a café still open at Châtelet, and Maigret went inside, sat down at one of the tables in the almost empty room and slowly drank a beer. Then he took a taxi.

  ‘Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. I’ll tell you where to drop me.’

  The boulevard was deserted. He couldn’t see any shadowy figures outside. As he climbed the last flight of stairs, the door opened, as usual, because Madame Maigret recognized his footsteps.

  ‘Well?’ she asked, her hair in curlers.

  ‘It’s over.’

  ‘Négrel?’

  ‘Jave.’

  ‘I would never have believed it.’

  ‘Did anyone come here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There weren’t any journalists hanging around when you came back?’