‘She worked in a hospital where each of the consultants had a few rooms for his private patients. One day, just before the war, she had to take care of a man who later became quite notorious in Alsace, a man named Lemke. He was a scrap-metal merchant and he was already rich, with quite a bad reputation. It was said that he was a money-lender on the side.’
‘Did he marry her?’
‘How did you know?’
He regretted spoiling her story.
‘I can tell it from your face.’
‘He married her, yes. Wait for the rest. During the war, he continued as a scrap-metal merchant. Inevitably, he worked with the Germans and amassed quite a fortune … Am I going on too long? Am I boring you?’
‘On the contrary. What happened at the Liberation?’
‘The Resistance went after Lemke. They wanted to force him to pay back his ill-gotten gains, then shoot him, but they couldn’t find him. Nobody knows where he and his wife were hiding. Somehow they managed to get to Spain, and from there they were able to set sail for Argentina. A mill owner from Mulhouse met Lemke over there in the street … A little more macaroni?’
‘Gladly. With some crust.’
‘I don’t know if he was still working, or if both of them were travelling for pleasure. One day, they took a plane for Brazil, and the plane crashed in the mountains. The crew and all the passengers died. And it’s precisely because Lemke and his wife died in a crash that the inheritance went to Madame Keller, who wasn’t expecting it. Normally, the money should have gone to the husband’s family. Do you know why the Lemkes got nothing and the wife’s niece got everything?’
Cheating, he shook his head. Actually, he did know why.
‘Apparently, when a man and his wife are victims of the same accident and it’s not possible to establish which of the two died first, the law assumes that the wife survived, even if only for a few moments. Doctors say that women are tougher and take longer to die! So the aunt inherited first, and then the fortune went to her niece … Phew!’
She was pleased with herself, quite proud in fact.
‘When it comes down to it, it’s partly because a nurse met a scrap-metal merchant in a hospital in Strasbourg and a plane crashed in the mountains in South America that Dr Keller became a tramp. If his wife hadn’t become rich overnight, if they’d continued to live in Rue du Sauvage, and if … You see what I mean? Don’t you think he would have stayed in Mulhouse?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘I also have information about her, but I warn you it’s just gossip and my sister can’t vouch for any of it.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘She’s an active little woman, always on the move, who loves social events and is constantly seeking out important people. With her husband gone, she had a field day, organizing dinner parties several times a week. That’s how she caught the eye of Prefect Badet, who had a disabled wife who’s since died. According to the gossips, she was his mistress, and she’s had other lovers, too, including a general whose name I’ve forgotten.’
‘I’ve met her.’
Was Madame Maigret disappointed? If she was, she didn’t let it show.
‘What’s she like?’
‘Just as you’ve described her. A bright, energetic little woman, very well groomed, who doesn’t look her age and loves budgerigars.’
‘What have budgerigars got to do with it?’
‘Her apartment is full of them.’
‘And she lives in Paris?’
‘On Ile Saint-Louis, three hundred metres from Pont Marie, where her husband slept. By the way, he smoked a pipe.’
Between the macaroni and the salad, he had taken the marble from his pocket and let it roll across the tablecloth.
‘What’s that?’
‘A marble. Doc had three of them.’
She was looking closely at her husband.
‘You like him, don’t you?’
‘I think I’m beginning to understand him.’
‘You understand how a man like him can become a tramp?’
‘Perhaps. He lived in Africa, the only white man in a place a long way from any city or main road. There, too, he was disappointed.’
‘Why?’
How easy would it have been to explain this to Madame Maigret, who had spent her life surrounded by order and cleanliness?
‘What I’m trying to figure out,’ he continued in a light tone, ‘is what he could have been guilty of.’
She frowned.
‘What do you mean? He’s the one who was attacked and thrown in the Seine, isn’t he?’
‘He’s the victim, that’s true.’
‘So why do you say—?’
‘Criminologists, especially American criminologists, have a theory about it, one that’s not as far-fetched as it seems.’
‘What theory?’
‘That, out of every ten crimes, there are at least eight where the victim shares a good deal of responsibility with the perpetrator.’
‘I don’t understand.’
He was looking at the marble as if spellbound.
‘Let’s take a woman and a jealous man having an argument. The man reprimands the woman, and she responds by taunting him.’
‘I suppose it happens.’
‘Let’s suppose he’s holding a knife, and he says to her, “Watch out. Next time, I’ll kill you.” ’
‘I suppose that happens, too.’
Not in her world!
‘Suppose, now, that she replies, “You wouldn’t dare. You’re not capable of something like that.” ’
‘I get the idea.’
‘Well, in a lot of crimes of passion, there’s something of that. You were just talking about Lemke, who made his fortune, half by money-lending, putting the screws on his customers, half by wheeling and dealing with the Germans. Would you have been surprised to learn he’d been murdered?’
‘But this doctor—’
‘Didn’t seem to be hurting anyone. He lived under the bridges, drank red wine from the bottle and walked the streets with a sandwich board.’
‘You see!’
‘And yet someone walked down on to the riverbank during the night and, taking advantage of the fact that he was asleep, struck him a blow on the head that could have been fatal, after which he dragged him to the Seine, from where he was only fished out by a miracle. That someone had a motive. In other words, consciously or not, Doc had given him a motive to get rid of him.’
‘Is he still in a coma?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you hoping to get something out of him when he’s able to talk?’
He shrugged and started filling his pipe. Soon afterwards, they switched off the light and sat there by the still open window.
It was a calm, pleasant evening, and despite long silences between them, they felt very close to one another.
When Maigret got to his office the following morning, the weather was as radiant as the day before. On the trees, the little green shoots had already given way to real leaves, still thin and tender.
Maigret had only just sat down at his desk when Lapointe came in. He was in a jovial mood.
‘I have two customers for you, chief.’
He was as proud and impatient as Madame Maigret had been the previous evening.
‘Where are they?’
‘In the waiting room.’
‘Who are they?’
‘The owner of the red Peugeot and the friend who was with him on Monday night. Not that I can take credit for it. Contrary to what you might think, there aren’t many red 403s in Paris, and only three with number plates that have two nines in them. One of them has been out of action for a week, being repaired, and the second one is in Cannes right now with its owner.’
‘Have you questioned these men?’
‘I only asked them two or three questions. I thought it best you see them yourself. Shall I bring them in?’
There was something mysterious in Lapointe’s demeanour, as if he had anoth
er surprise for Maigret up his sleeve.
‘Go ahead.’
He waited, sitting at his desk. He still had a multicoloured marble in his pocket, like a good luck charm.
‘Monsieur Jean Guillot,’ Lapointe announced, admitting the first of the two men.
He was a man in his forties, of medium height, dressed with a certain care.
‘Monsieur Lucien Hardoin, industrial draughtsman.’
He was taller, thinner and a few years younger and, as Maigret was soon to discover, he stammered.
‘Sit down, gentlemen. From what I gather, one of you owns a red Peugeot.’
It was Jean Guillot who raised his hand, not without a certain pride.
‘That’s my car,’ he said. ‘I bought it at the beginning of winter.’
‘Where do you live, Monsieur Guillot?’
‘Rue de Turenne, not far from Boulevard du Temple.’
‘What’s your profession?’
‘Insurance agent.’
He was clearly a little overawed to be in an office of the Police Judiciaire and to be questioned by a detective chief inspector, but he didn’t seem scared. He even looked around curiously, as if hoping to give his friends a detailed account later.
‘And you, Monsieur Hardoin?’
‘I l-l-live in the s-s-same b-b-building.’
‘The floor above us,’ Guillot helped him.
‘Are you married?’
‘B-b-bachelor.’
‘I’m married with two children, a boy and a girl,’ Guillot said, not waiting to be asked.
Lapointe, standing by the door, smiled vaguely. The two men, each on a chair with his hat in his lap, were like a double act.
‘Are you friends?’
They replied as unanimously as Hardoin’s stammer allowed:
‘Very good friends.’
‘Did you know François Keller?’
They looked at each other in surprise, as if hearing this name for the first time. It was Hardoin who asked:
‘Wh-wh-who’s that?’
‘He used to be a doctor, in Mulhouse.’
‘I’ve never set foot in Mulhouse,’ Guillot said. ‘Does he claim he knows me?’
‘What were you doing on Monday night?’
‘As I told your inspector, I had no idea it was forbidden to—’
‘Just tell me exactly what you were doing.’
‘When I got back from my rounds, about eight o’clock – I do the western suburbs – my wife took me aside so that the children shouldn’t hear and told me that Nestor—’
‘Who’s Nestor?’
‘Our dog. A Great Dane. He was twelve years old and very gentle with the children. He’d been with them since they were born, more or less. When they were babies, he would lie at the foot of the cradle, and I hardly dared approach.’
‘So, your wife told you—’
He continued, imperturbably:
‘I don’t know if you’ve ever had a Great Dane. In general, they don’t live as long as other dogs, I’m not sure why. And in later life, they have almost all the same ailments as humans. For some weeks, he’d been almost paralysed, and I’d suggested taking him to a vet and having him put down, but my wife didn’t want to. When I got back on Monday, he was dying, and, because my wife didn’t want the children to see, she’d been to fetch our friend Lucien, who helped her take him to his apartment.’
Maigret looked at Lapointe, who winked at him.
‘I immediately went upstairs to Lucien’s to see how the animal was. Poor Nestor was on his last legs. I phoned the vet’s and was told he was at the theatre and wouldn’t be back until midnight. We spent more than two hours watching the dog die. I sat down on the floor and he put his head in my lap. He kept getting these terrible convulsions.’
Hardoin nodded and tried to intervene.
‘He … he …’
‘He died at ten thirty,’ Guillot cut in. ‘I went downstairs to tell my wife. I stayed in the apartment, where the children were asleep, while she went up to see Nestor one last time. I had a bite to eat, because I hadn’t had dinner. I confess that after that I drank two glasses of cognac to buck me up, and when my wife came back down, I took the bottle upstairs and offered some to Lucien, who was as upset as I was.’
A little tragedy, in other words, on the fringes of another tragedy.
‘That was when we asked ourselves what we were going to do with the body. I’ve heard there’s such a thing as a dogs’ cemetery, but I suppose it must be expensive, and apart from that, I can’t afford to lose a day’s work to sort it all out. And my wife doesn’t have time.’
‘Anyway,’ Maigret said.
‘Anyway …’
The word hung there, Guillot having lost the thread of his thoughts.
‘We … we … we …’
‘We didn’t want to dump him on a piece of waste ground either. Have you any idea how big a Great Dane is? Lying there in Lucien’s dining room, he looked even bigger and more impressive. Anyway …’
He was pleased to get back to that point.
‘Anyway, we decided to throw him in the Seine. I went back to our apartment to look for a potato sack. It wasn’t big enough, and the paws stuck out. It wasn’t easy taking him downstairs and putting him in the boot of the car.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Ten past eleven.’
‘How do you know it was ten past eleven?’
‘Because the concierge wasn’t in bed yet. She saw us go by and asked us what had happened. I told her. The door to the lodge was open, and I automatically looked at the clock. It said ten past eleven.’
‘You told her you were going to throw the dog in the Seine? Did you go straight to Quai des Célestins?’
‘It was the nearest place.’
‘It couldn’t have taken you more than a few minutes to get there. I don’t suppose you stopped on the way?’
‘Not on the way there. We took the shortest route. It only took five minutes. I wasn’t sure about driving the car down the ramp, but as nobody was about, I took the risk.’
‘So it wasn’t yet eleven thirty.’
‘Definitely not … You’ll see … We both took hold of the sack and tipped it over into the river.’
‘Still without seeing anyone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was there a barge nearby?’
‘Yes, there was. We even saw a light on inside.’
‘But you didn’t see the bargee?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t go as far as Pont Marie?’
‘We had no reason to go any further. We threw Nestor into the river as close to the car as possible.’
Hardoin was still nodding, occasionally opening his mouth to get a word in, then closing it again, discouraged.
‘What happened next?’
‘We left. Once we were back up—’
‘You mean on Quai des Célestins?’
‘Yes. I didn’t feel terribly well and I remembered there wasn’t any more cognac left in the bottle. It had been a trying evening. Nestor was almost part of the family. When we got to Rue de Turenne, I suggested to Lucien that we have a drink, and we stopped outside a bar on the corner of Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, right next to Place des Vosges.’
‘You had more cognac?’
‘Yes. There was a clock there, too, and I looked at it. The owner told me it was five minutes fast. It was eleven forty.’
He repeated, apologetically:
‘I swear to you I didn’t know it’s forbidden. Put yourself in my shoes. Especially with the children. I wanted to spare them. They still don’t know the dog is dead. We’ve told them he’s run away but we may still find him.’
Without realizing it, Maigret had taken the marble out of his pocket and was fingering it.
‘I assume you’ve told me the truth?’
‘Why would I lie? If there’s a fine to be paid, I’m ready to—’
‘What time did you get home?’
&nbs
p; The two men looked at each other with a touch of embarrassment. Hardoin opened his mouth once again, but once again it was Guillot who replied.
‘Late. About one in the morning.’
‘The bar in Rue de Turenne stayed open until one in the morning?’
It was a neighbourhood that Maigret knew well, where everything closes at midnight, or even well before midnight.
‘No. We went for a final drink on Place de la République.’
‘Were you drunk?’
‘You know how it is. You drink when you’re in an emotional state. One drink leads to another …’
‘You didn’t go back to the river?’
Guillot assumed a surprised air and looked at his friend as if asking him to add his testimony.
‘No! What for?’
Maigret turned to Lapointe.
‘Take them next door and get down their statements … I’m grateful to you, gentlemen. Needless to say, everything you’ve told me will be checked.’
‘I swear I told the truth.’
‘M-m-me, too.’
It was like a farce. Maigret remained alone in his office, standing by the open window, the glass marble in his hand. He looked pensively at the Seine flowing beyond the trees, the boats passing, the bright splotches of the women’s dresses on Pont Saint-Michel.
He finally sat down again and asked for the Hôtel-Dieu.
‘Put me through to the head nurse of the surgery unit.’
Now that she had seen him with the big boss and had received instructions, she was all sweetness and light.
‘I was just about to phone you, inspector. Professor Magnin has just examined the patient. He says he’s much better than last night and he hopes that complications can be avoided. It’s almost a miracle.’
‘Has he regained consciousness?’
‘Not completely, but he’s starting to take an interest in what’s around him. It’s hard to know if he’s aware of the state he’s in or where he is.’
‘Does he still have his bandages?’
‘Not on the face.’
‘Do you think he’ll regain consciousness today?’
‘It may happen at any moment. Do you want me to let you know as soon as he speaks?’
‘No. I’m on my way.’
‘Now?’
Now, yes. He was anxious to make the acquaintance of the man whom he had previously only seen with his head bandaged. He passed through the inspectors’ office, where Lapointe was typing up the statements of the insurance man and his friend with the stammer.
Maigret and the Tramp Page 6
