“And yet she was only a girl, scarcely more than a kid, really.”
“The Thouret girl, do you mean?”
The telephone rang. The chief commissioner answered it.
“Yes, he’s here.”
And turning to Maigret:
“It’s for you. Neveu has arrived, bringing someone with him. He can’t wait to show you his prize.”
“See you later, then.”
As he went past the waiting-room, he could see Inspector Neveu, on his feet, apparently in a state of great excitement, and, sitting beside him on one of the upright chairs, a pale, sickly-looking man of indeterminate age, whose face seemed somehow familiar. It was more than that, he felt as if he had known the man all his life, but still, he couldn’t put a name to him.
“Do you want a word with me in private first?” he said to Neveu.
“There wouldn’t be any point. And, besides, I wouldn’t risk letting this joker out of my sight for a single second.”
It was only then that Maigret realized that the man was handcuffed.
He went into his office, followed by the prisoner, who was dragging his feet a little. He smelled of spirits. Neveu, bringing up the rear, locked the door behind him, and removed the handcuffs from the man’s wrists.
“Don’t you recognize him, chief?”
Maigret still could not put a name to him. All the same, one thing was suddenly clear. The man had the look of a clown stripped of his make-up, cheeks that seemed to be made of rubber, a wide mouth twisted in an expression of bitterness mingled with drollery.
Who was it who had spoken recently of a man with a face like a clown? Mademoiselle Léone? The old bookkeeper, Monsieur Saimbron? At any rate, whoever it was, that person had seen Monsieur Louis sitting on a bench in the Boulevard Saint-Martin or the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle in the company of another man.
“Take a seat.”
The man answered, as if he felt completely at home:
“Thanks, chief.”
7
THE RAINWEAR SHOP
“Jef Schrameck, otherwise known as Fred the Clown, also the Acrobat, born at Riquewhir in the Upper Rhine, sixty-three years of age.”
Flushed with triumph, Inspector Neveu introduced his captive with all the flourish of a ringmaster.
“Do you remember him now, chief?”
Neveu was referring to something that had occurred fifteen years ago or more. Now Maigret came to think of it, it had happened not so very far from the Boulevard Saint-Martin, somewhere between the Rue de Richelieu and the Rue Drouot.
“Sixty-three?” repeated Maigret, looking at the man, who, taking this as a compliment, responded with a broad smile.
Possibly because he was so thin, he didn’t look his age. In fact, he was ageless. It was his expression, most of all, that made it impossible to think of him as a man getting on in years. Terrified though he must be, he still looked as if he couldn’t take anyone seriously, not even himself. No doubt it was simply a mannerism acquired over the years, like the capacity to pull extraordinary faces. He just had to make people laugh.
The amazing thing was that, at the time of that business on the Boulevards which had turned him into a celebrity for a few weeks, he was already past the age of forty-five.
Maigret pressed the buzzer, and lifted the receiver of the internal telephone.
“Would you please send me down the file on Schrameck, Jef Schrameck, born at Riquewhir, in the Upper Rhine.”
He could not remember how it had started. It had been an evening in early spring, for it was already pitch dark by eight o’clock. The Grands Boulevards had been crowded, and there was not a single vacant chair on any of the café terraces.
Had someone noticed a dim light flickering in one of the windows of an office block? At any rate, the police were alerted, and came running to the spot. As usual, a crowd had gathered, though most of the people had had no idea of what was going on.
No one had dreamed that the spectacle would last nearly two hours, and provide much drama interspersed with comic interludes, or that, towards the end, the crowd would be such that it would be necessary to erect barriers.
Trapped in the office building, the intruder had opened a window and, with the help of a strip of guttering, had crawled sideways along the entire length of the façade. He had just found a foothold on the sill of a window on the floor above, when a policeman appeared. The man had persisted with his hazardous climb, to the accompaniment of terrified shrieks from the women in the crowd below.
It had been one of the most exciting chases in police history, with the pursuers inside the building hurrying from one floor to the next, flinging windows open as they went, and the quarry nimbly eluding them, as if performing a circus turn entirely for his own amusement.
He had been the first to reach the roof, a steeply sloping roof, which the police had been reluctant to risk climbing. The man, apparently impervious to vertigo, had taken a flying leap on to the next roof, and so on from one building to the next, until he had reached the corner of the Rue Drouot, where he had vanished through a skylight.
They had lost sight of him, but had found him again a quarter of an hour later, on another roof further on. The people in the street had pointed upwards shouting: “There he is!”
No one had known either what he had been doing in the first place or whether he was armed. Someone had started a rumor that he had killed several people.
The climax of the show, as far as the spectators were concerned, had been the arrival of the Fire Brigade with their ladders. Some time had gone by before powerful floodlights were set up and trained on the rooftops.
When, at last, he had been arrested in the Rue de la Grange-Batelière, he was not even out of breath. He was very cocky, and had poured amiable scorn on the police. Then, at the very moment when he was being bundled into a car, he had wriggled out of the grasp of his captors like an eel, and managed, heaven knows how, to worm his way to freedom through the crowd.
The name of the man was Schrameck. For several days, the Acrobat had hogged the headlines in all the newspapers, until he was recaptured, quite by chance, at a race meeting.
He had made his debut as a circus performer at a very early age, appearing mainly in Germany and Alsace-Lorraine. Later, he had come to Paris and, except for brief spells in prison for theft, had always found employment at various fairgrounds.
“I never dreamed,” Inspector Neveu was saying, “that he was spending his declining years in my manor.”
The man remarked in all seriousness:
“I turned over a new leaf years ago.”
“I’d got a description of a tall, thin, elderly man who had been seen in conversation with Monsieur Louis on benches in the Boulevards.”
Hadn’t someone said to Maigret: “The sort of man one often sees sitting on a bench?”
Fred the Clown was the kind of individual whom one would not be in the least surprised to find lounging about for hours, watching the passers-by or feeding the pigeons. His coloring blended with the gray paving stones, and he had the look of a man who had nothing to do and nowhere to go.
“Before I hand him over to you, I think I ought to tell you how I happened to catch up with him. I was in a bar in the Rue Blondel, very near the Porte Saint-Martin. The bar also serves as a betting shop. It’s called Chez Fernand. Fernand is a former jockey. I know him well. I showed him a photograph of Monsieur Louis, and I could tell from the way he looked at it that he recognized him.
“‘Is he a customer of yours?’ I asked him.
“‘He isn’t, himself. But he’s been in here two or three times in company with one of my best customers.’
“‘Who’s that?’
“‘Fred the Clown.’
“‘The Acrobat? I thought he had either died long ago or was in prison!’
“‘He’s very much alive, and he comes in here every afternoon for a glass of something, and to place his bets. But, come to think of it, I haven’t seen him
for some days now.’
“‘How long exactly?’
“Fernand considered the matter, and then went and had a word with his wife in the kitchen.
“‘Monday was the last time he came in.’
“‘Was Monsieur Louis with him?’
“He couldn’t remember, but he was quite sure he hadn’t set eyes on the Acrobat since last Monday. Do you see what I’m getting at?
“The next step was to find him. I now knew where to look. I had found out the name of the woman he’s been living with for the past few years. She used to sell vegetables off a barrow. Her name is Françoise Bidou.
“I had then only to get her address. She lives on the Quai de Valmy, overlooking the canal.
“I found my man, skulking in her bedroom. He hadn’t set foot outside since Monday. The first thing I did was to clap him in handcuffs. I didn’t want him slipping through my fingers.”
“I’m not as agile as I used to be,” quipped Schrameck.
There was a knock on the door. A thick, buff-colored file was deposited on Maigret’s desk. It contained Schrameck’s life history, or, more precisely, the history of his brushes with the Law.
Unhurriedly, puffing at his pipe, Maigret skimmed through it.
As far as he was concerned, this was the best time of day for conducting interviews. Between twelve and two, most of the offices were deserted, there were fewer interruptions, and hardly any telephone calls. He had the same feeling he had often experienced late at night of having the whole place to himself.
“You must be hungry,” he said to Neveu.
As Neveu seemed at a loss as to how he should reply, Maigret persisted.
“You’d better go out and have a snack now. I may want you to relieve me here later.”
“Whatever you say, chief.”
Neveu, much against his will, went out. The prisoner watched him go with a mocking expression on his face. Maigret lit a fresh pipe, laid his broad hand on the file, looked Fred the Clown straight in the eye, and murmured:
“Alone, at last!”
He felt more at his ease with this man than he had with Monique. All the same, before getting down to business, he took the precaution of locking his door, and even went so far as to bolt the door communicating with the Inspectors’ Duty Room. Then, catching him glancing at the window, Jef protested, with a comic grimace:
“Have no fear. I’m past keeping my balance on narrow ledges.”
“I suppose you know why you’re here?”
Ever the clown, he protested plaintively:
“It’s always the same people who get arrested! It reminds me of the good old days. Nothing of this sort has happened to me for years.”
“Your friend Louis has been murdered. It’s no good putting on that bewildered expression. You know very well who I mean. You are also well aware that there’s every likelihood of your being charged with having committed the crime.”
“That would be just one more miscarriage of justice.”
Maigret picked up the telephone.
“Get me Chez Fernand. It’s a bar in the Rue Blondel.”
When he had Fernand on the line, he said:
“Chief Superintendent Maigret speaking. It’s about one of your regulars, Jef Schrameck…The Acrobat, that’s right…I want to know whether he gambled heavily…What?…Yes, I see…And latterly?…Saturday?…I’m much obliged to you…No…That’s all for the present.”
He seemed satisfied. Jef, on the other hand, was looking a little uneasy.
“Do you wish me to repeat what I have just been told?”
“People will say anything!”
“All your life, you’ve been losing money on horses.”
“If the Government had put a stop to it, I should have been spared the expense.”
“You’ve been backing on the Pari-Mutuel with Fernand for some years now.”
“He’s a registered agent of the Pari-Mutuel.”
“Be that as it may, you must have got the money to bet with from somewhere. Now until about two and a half years ago, you bet only in very small sums. On occasion, you hadn’t even the wherewithal to pay for your drinks, and Fernand would let you have them on credit.”
“He shouldn’t have done! It only encouraged me to keep at it.”
“Then, all of a sudden, you began staking larger sums of money, sometimes very large sums. And a few days later, you were cleaned out all over again.”
“What does that prove?”
“Last Saturday, you staked an enormous sum.”
“What of it? The owners are often prepared to risk as much as a million francs on a horse!”
“Where did you get the money?”
“My lady friend is earning.”
“What does she do?”
“Housework. Occasionally she gives a hand in one of the bistros on the Quai.”
“Do you take me for a fool?”
“Such a thought never crossed my mind, chief superintendent.”
“Now look here, we’ve wasted enough time already.”
“I assure you, I have no pressing engagements…”
“Never mind that. I’m going to tell you just where you stand. You were seen by several witnesses in Monsieur Louis’s company.”
“A finer man you couldn’t wish to meet.”
“That’s neither here nor there. I don’t mean recently. This was about two and a half years ago. At that time Monsieur Louis had been out of work for months. He was at the end of his tether.”
“I know the feeling all too well!” sighed Jef. “However long the tether, we all come to the end of it sometime!”
“As to what you were living on in those days, I have no idea, but I’m prepared to believe that you were being kept by your friend Françoise. You hung about on benches, occasionally venturing a few francs on a horse, and getting your drinks on credit in various bars. As for Monsieur Louis, he was driven to borrowing money from at least two old friends.”
“Which only goes to show that the world is full of people on their uppers.”
Maigret ignored this remark. Jef had been so long accustomed to the laughter of an audience that he had developed a craving for it, which was why he could never stop clowning. Doggedly, the chief superintendent pursued his own line of thought.
“The fact remains that, all of a sudden, you were both very flush. The evidence, with exact dates, will emerge in the course of the inquiry.”
“I can never remember dates.”
“After that, there were times when you gambled heavily, and others when you couldn’t even pay for your drinks. Nobody could fail to draw the conclusion that you and Monsieur Louis had found a means of laying your hands on very large sums of money. Whatever the means, it was not legal. But we’ll come to that later.”
“What a pity! I’m dying to know how we managed it.”
“You’ll soon be laughing on the other side of your face. I repeat that on Saturday you were loaded with money, but you lost it all in the space of a few hours. On Monday afternoon, your associate, Monsieur Louis, was murdered in a cul-de-sac off the Boulevard Saint-Martin.”
“It was a tragic loss for me.”
“Have you ever been up for trial at the Assizes?”
“No. Only in the lower courts. Several times.”
“Well, I may as well tell you that juries as a whole don’t much care for clowning, especially from a man with your record. Nothing is more calculated to persuade them that you are the only person who would know where to find Monsieur Louis at all times of day, and the only one with a motive for murder.”
“In that case, they must be a lot of idiots.”
“That’s all I have to say to you. It is now half-past twelve. We are both here in my office. At one o’clock Judge Coméliau will be back in his chambers.
“As soon as he arrives, I’ll hand you over to him, and he will deal with you as he thinks fit.”
“Isn’t he a little dark man, with a toothbrush mustache?”
>
“Yes.”
“He and I have met before. He’s a right so-and-so. Come to think of it, he can’t be all that young any more. What if I say I don’t want to see him?”
“It rests entirely with you, as you very well know.”
Fred the Clown heaved a long sigh.
“You don’t by any chance happen to have a spare cigarette?”
Maigret took a packet from his drawer, and held it out to him.
“Have you a match?”
He smoked for a while in silence.
“I don’t suppose you keep any liquor in here?”
“Are you going to come clean?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’m still considering whether there’s anything I can usefully say.”
This might turn out to be a very long session. Maigret knew his sort. On impulse, he went across to the door leading to the Inspectors’ Duty room, and called out:
“Lucas! Do me a favor. Go to the Quai de Valmy, and find a woman called Françoise Bidou. I want her brought here.”
At this Fred the Clown wriggled in his chair, and held up his hand like a schoolboy in the classroom.
“You wouldn’t do that to me, chief superintendent!”
“Will you talk?”
“It would help a lot if I could have a little something to drink.”
“Hold on, Lucas. Don’t go until I tell you.”
And to Jef:
“Are you afraid of her?”
“You promised to give me a drink.”
Maigret shut the door, went to the cupboard, and got out the bottle of liqueur brandy that he always kept there. He poured a small tot into a tumbler.
“Aren’t you going to join me?”
“Well, what have you to say?”
“Ask me whatever questions you like. I’d be obliged if you would take note that I am making no attempt to impede the course of justice, as the lawyers put it.”
“Where did you first meet Monsieur Louis?”
“On a bench in the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle.”
“How did you strike up an acquaintance with him?”
“The way one does, sitting next to someone on a bench. I remarked on the weather, and he agreed that it was cold for early spring, but said that it was milder than it had been the week before.”
Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard Page 12
