It was one of the many talents cultivated by Schrameck when he was still working in fairgrounds. One of his convictions had been for purse-stealing.
“Ignoring her protests, I set about searching the place. It wasn’t until right at the end that it occurred to me to unscrew the brass bed-knobs. They’re hollow inside, and two of them were stuffed full of tightly rolled notes. They add up to a fortune! Françoise couldn’t believe her eyes.
“‘To think that he let me go out charing, when he had all that money hidden away! He’ll never get to heaven! Just let him come back here, and he’ll see what…’
“She’s still in the most fearful rage, calling him every name under the sun. She didn’t even calm down when I suggested that he had put the money aside to provide for her, in case anything happened to him.
“‘What amazes me,’ she snarled, ‘is how he managed to avoid gambling it all away.’
“Do you see what I’m getting at now, chief? They must have had a big share-out last Saturday. I’ve got more than two hundred thousand francs here. Jef wouldn’t have dared to gamble all that lot away, especially at Fernand’s place. He only lost a fraction of the money. If they split it down the middle, Monsieur Louis must have had a packet salted away as well.”
“I’m very grateful to you.”
“What shall I do with the money?”
“Have you got it with you?”
“I should say I have! I couldn’t very well leave it there…”
“Go and have a word with your chief superintendent, and ask him to get things sorted out according to the rule book.”
“Must I?”
“Heavens above! I don’t want the defense lawyers accusing us of having planted the notes!”
“Have I put my foot in it?”
“You have, rather.”
“I’m sorry. I only wanted…”
Maigret hung up. He turned to Torrence, who was working at his desk:
“Are you very busy?”
“It’s nothing that can’t wait.”
“I want you to go and see Chief Superintendent Antoine. Ask him to arrange for one of his men to get out a list of all the thefts committed in shops in the Grands Boulevards during the last two and a half years or so, especially those that took place while they were shut for lunch.”
Such cases were not the concern of his department, but of Antoine’s, whose office was at the end of the passage.
He went back to Albert Jorisse, who had just lit another cigarette, and released the inspector who had been keeping an eye on him.
“I had no intention of running away, you know.”
“I daresay. But you might have been tempted to take a peep at the files on my desk. Go on, you may as well admit it.”
“Perhaps.”
“That makes all the difference.”
“What does?”
“Never mind. I know what I’m talking about.”
“What do you intend to do with me?”
“For the time being, you’re staying here with me.”
Maigret glanced at his watch, and calculated that Lucas and Monique must have arrived at the doctor’s by now. No doubt they were in the waiting-room, reading the magazines.
“You despise me, don’t you?”
He shrugged.
“I’ve never had a chance.”
“A chance to do what?”
“To escape.”
“To escape from what?”
Maigret sounded almost aggressive.
“You don’t understand, I can see that. If you’d heard nothing but money, money, money ever since you were a child, and if you’d seen your mother shaking with anxiety at the end of every month…”
“I had no mother.”
The boy was silenced. For nearly ten minutes, not a word was spoken. For a while, Maigret stood by the window with his back to the room, watching the rain trickling down the window panes. Then he began pacing up and down, and finally, almost defiantly, he made up his mind to open the cupboard. He had washed the glass in the enamel drinking fountain some time before. He rinsed it again, and poured a tot of brandy into it.
“Would you care for a drop of this?”
“No, thanks.”
Albert Jorisse was finding it hard to keep awake. His cheeks were flushed, and Maigret was sure his eyes were smarting. From time to time, he swayed in his chair.
“In time, I daresay, you’ll prove yourself to be a man.”
He could hear footsteps in the passage, those of a man and a woman, and he knew that it was Monique, accompanied by Lucas. He had a decision to make. That was what he had been brooding over for the last quarter of an hour. Should he have the girl brought into his office, or should he interview her next door?
With a little shrug, he went across and opened the door. Both of them had glistening drops of rain on their shoulders. Monique was no longer her old confident self, and when she caught sight of Albert, she stopped dead in her tracks, clutched her bag more tightly, and glared furiously at the chief superintendent.
“Did you take her to see a doctor?”
“At first, she flatly refused to go. I…”
“What did he find?”
Jorisse stood up, and seemed on the point of groveling at her feet to beg her forgiveness.
“Nothing.”
“You mean she’s not pregnant?”
“She never has been.”
Jorisse, scarcely able to believe his ears, didn’t know which way to turn. He made a sudden move as if to spring at Maigret, whom he seemed to regard as the cruelest man on earth.
Maigret, after shutting the door, indicated a chair to the young woman.
“Have you anything to say?”
“I did believe…”
“No.”
“What do you know about it? You’re not a woman.”
Then, turning to the young man:
“I swear to you, Albert, that I truly believed I was going to have a child.”
Maigret, unmoved, but not wishing to be unfair, said:
“For how long?”
“For several days.”
“And then?”
“When I discovered it was a false alarm, I didn’t want him to be disappointed.”
“Disappointed?”
Maigret exchanged glances with Lucas. The two of them went out together into the adjoining office. They shut the door, leaving the young lovers to themselves.
“As soon as I spoke of taking her to a doctor, I could see that there was something amiss. She protested violently. It wasn’t until I threatened to arrest her and Albert…”
Maigret was not listening. Lucas was not telling him anything he didn’t already know. Torrence was back at his desk.
“Did you do as I asked?”
“They’re still working on the list. It’s going to be a long one. For the last two years or more, Chief Superintendent Antoine and his squad have been plugging away at it. Apparently…”
Maigret went over to the communicating door, and put his ear to it.
“What are they up to?” asked Lucas.
“Nothing.”
“Are they talking?”
“They’re not saying a word.”
He decided to look in on the chief commissioner, and put him in the picture. They talked for a while about this and that. Maigret spent the next hour or so dropping in on various colleagues for a chat.
When he returned to his office, Albert and Monique looked as if they had not stirred during his absence. They were still sitting upright on their chairs, ten feet or so apart. The girl’s face was unrevealing, her jaw, so like her mother’s and aunts’, resolutely set.
Whenever her eyes chanced to meet the young man’s, it was hard to tell whether there was more of contempt or loathing in her glance.
As for Jorisse, he was utterly crushed. His eyes were red, either with exhaustion or with weeping.
“You are both free to go,” Maigret said, without preamble, as he went towards
his chair.
It was Monique who asked:
“Will there be anything in the papers?”
“There’s no reason why there should be.”
“Will my mother have to be told?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“And my employers?”
He shook his head, and she got swiftly to her feet and made for the door, without so much as sparing a glance for Jorisse. With her hand on the doorknob, she turned to the chief superintendent, and said:
“You knew all along, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he replied. Then, with a sigh, he said to Albert:
“You’re free to go as well.”
And seeing that the youngster did not stir:
“You’d better hurry, if you want to catch up with her…”
She was already on the stairs.
“Should I, do you think?”
“What did she say to you?”
“She called me an idiot.”
“Is that all?”
“She added that on no account would she ever permit me to speak to her again.”
“And then?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
“As I’ve already said, you’re free to go.”
“What am I to say to my parents?”
“Whatever you like. They’ll be only too delighted to have you back.”
“Do you really think so?”
In the end, he almost had to push him out. He still seemed to have something on his mind.
“Off you go, you young idiot!”
“I’m not a ruffian then?”
“No, only an idiot! She was quite right.”
He turned his head away, sniffed and murmured:
“Thanks.”
Presently, alone in his office at last, Maigret was able to pour himself another drop of liqueur brandy.
9
JUDGE COMÉLIAU GROWS RESTIVE
“Is that you, Maigret?”
“Yes, judge.”
He telephoned every day, and if one of Maigret’s colleagues happened to be in the room at the time, Maigret would give him a wink. His voice sounded unusually bland when he was talking to the examining magistrate.
“How are things on the Thouret front?”
“Progressing! Progressing!”
“Don’t you think it’s been dragging on a bit too long?”
“You know how it is with a crime of this sort, it takes time to clear things up.”
“Are you sure it’s a case of thieves falling out?”
“You’ve said so yourself, right from the start. Your words were:
“‘It’s as plain as a pikestaff.’”
“Do you believe this Schrameck fellow’s story?”
“I’m convinced he was telling the truth.”
“In that case, who did kill Louis Thouret?”
“Someone who wanted his money.”
“At any rate, do the best you can to speed things up.”
“You have my word on that, judge.”
He did nothing about it, however, but instead turned his attention to two other cases, which kept him busy for most of the day. Three men, Janvier and young Lapointe among them, were taking it in turn to keep an eye on the house in the Rue d’Angoulême, twenty-four hours a day. The telephone was still being tapped.
He was no longer interested either in Madame Thouret or in her daughter. Jorisse, too, who was now once more working full time at the bookshop in the Boulevard Saint-Michel, had been eliminated from the case. It was as if he had never known them.
As to the theft, he had turned the file over to his colleague, Antoine, who was having Jef Schrameck, Fred the Clown, alias the Acrobat, brought up for questioning nearly every day. Maigret occasionally ran into Jef in the corridor.
“Everything OK?”
“Everything’s fine, chief superintendent.”
The weather was cold, but dry. The proprietress of the house in the Rue d’Angoulême had not succeeded in finding other tenants, so that two of her rooms were still vacant. As for the three girls who were still living there, knowing that the house was being watched, they no longer dared ply their usual trade. They scarcely ever went out, except to have a meal in a nearby restaurant, or to buy something from the delicatessen, or when one of them went to a cinema.
“What do they do with themselves all day?” Maigret asked Janvier, when things had been going on in this way for some days.
“They sleep, or play cards or patience. One of them, the one they call Arlette, puts her tongue out at me every time she sees me from the window. Yesterday, she tried something different. She hitched up her dressing-gown and showed me her behind.”
The Mobile Squad in Marseilles had taken over the inquiries concerning the knife. They were searching not only in the town itself, but in the surrounding villages as well. They were also taking an interest in any shady local characters who had recently moved to Paris.
All these routine inquiries were being conducted unhurriedly and without fuss. And yet Maigret had not forgotten Monsieur Louis. Once, when he had to go to the Rue de Clignancourt on some other business, he had even gone so far as to look in on Mademoiselle Léone, not forgetting to buy a cream cake for the old lady on his way.
“Have you still not solved the mystery?”
“Sooner or later, the truth will come to light.”
He said nothing to the former shorthand typist of Monsieur Louis’s activities.
“Do you know why he was killed?”
“For his money.”
“Surely he can’t have had all that much!”
“He had a very large income.”
“Poor man! What a shame to have to die, just when all his troubles were over!”
He did not venture on the long climb up to Monsieur Saimbron’s lodgings, but ran across him by chance one day in the flower market. They exchanged greetings.
Then one morning, at long last, he received a telephone call from Marseilles. It lasted a long time. Afterwards, he went up to the Registry, and was there for nearly an hour, looking through hundreds of registration forms. Then he went downstairs to Records, where he spent nearly as long again.
It was round about eleven when he went out into the courtyard, and got into one of the little Headquarters cars.
“The Rue d’Angoulême.”
It was young Lapointe who was on guard outside the house.
“Everybody at home?”
“Only one of them is out. She’s doing her shopping locally.”
“Which one?”
“Olga. She’s the dark one.”
He rang the bell. The curtains twitched. Mariette Gibon, the landlady, flip-flopped to the door in her bedroom slippers.
“Well, well! If it isn’t the Big White Chief himself! Your men must be getting fed up with wearing down the paving stones outside my door.”
“Is Arlette at home?”
“Shall I call her down?”
“No, thanks. I’d rather go up to her room.”
She stayed out in the entrance lobby, looking very uneasy, and he went upstairs and knocked at the door on the first floor.
“Come in!”
As usual, she was in her dressing gown, lying on the unmade bed, reading a romantic novel.
“Oh! So it’s you.”
“In person,” he said, putting his hat on the chest of drawers, and sitting down on a chair by the bed.
She seemed both surprised and amused.
“Don’t tell me you’re still on about that same old business?”
“The case will not be closed until the murderer is found.”
“You don’t mean you still haven’t found him? I thought you were such a cunning old fox. I hope it doesn’t embarrass you, me being in my dressing gown like this?”
“Not in the least.”
“I daresay you must be used to it by now.”
Without stirring from the bed, she moved so that her dressing gown flew open
. As Maigret did not seem to have noticed, she said provocatively:
“What do you say to this?”
“What?”
“Seeing all this.”
As he still remained impassive, she made a vulgar gesture, and said impatiently:
“How about it?”
“Thanks.”
“Yes, thanks, do you mean?”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, really, old man…You are the…”
“Do you get a kick out of being coarse?”
“You’re surely not going to lecture me, on top of everything else?”
All the same, she gathered together the folds of her dressing gown, and sat up on the edge of the bed.
“What exactly is it you want of me?”
“Do your parents know that you are no longer working in the Avenue Matignon?”
“What are you on about now?”
“You worked for a year at Chez Hélène et Hélène in the Avenue Matignon.”
“What of it?”
“I was just wondering if your father knew you’d changed your occupation.”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Your father is a good man.”
“He’s an old fool, and that’s a fact.”
“If he should ever find out what you’ve been up to…”
“Are you thinking of telling him?”
“I might.”
This time, she was unable to conceal her agitation.
“You haven’t been to Clermont-Ferrand to see my parents?”
“Not yet…”
She got up, made a dash for the door, and flung it open to reveal Mariette Gibon, who had no doubt been standing there for some time, with her ear glued to the door panel.
“My God! You’ve got a nerve!”
“May I come in?”
“No. Shove off. And if I ever catch you spying again…”
Maigret had not moved from his chair.
“Well?” he said.
“Well, what? I can’t think what you want from me.”
“You know perfectly well.”
“No. I don’t. You’ll need to spell it out.”
“You’ve been living in this house for the past six months.”
“So what?”
“You hardly ever go out in the daytime, so you must be aware of most of what goes on.”
Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard Page 15
