‘I’m going to the Hôtel-Dieu. I don’t know when I’ll be back.’
It wasn’t far. He went there as if paying a neighbourly visit, unhurriedly, his pipe between his teeth, his hands behind his back, all kinds of undefined thoughts going round and round in his head.
He got to the Hôtel-Dieu just as Fat Léa, still in her pink blouse, was moving away from the counter with a disappointed look on her face. She rushed over to him.
‘You know, inspector, not only are they stopping me from seeing him, but they’re refusing to tell me how he is. They almost called a policeman to have me thrown out. Have you heard anything?’
‘I’ve just been told he’s much better.’
‘Do they think he’ll pull through?’
‘It seems likely.’
‘Is he in a lot of pain?’
‘I don’t think he’s aware of it. I assume they’ve given him injections.’
‘Yesterday, some plain-clothes men came looking for his things. Were they your people?’
He replied in the affirmative, adding with a smile:
‘Don’t worry. He’ll get it all back.’
‘Do you have any idea yet who might have done it?’
‘Do you?’
‘I’ve been living by the river for fifteen years, and this is the first time I’ve known anyone to attack a tramp. I mean, we’re perfectly harmless, you must know that as well as anyone.’
She liked the word so much that she repeated it:
‘Harmless. There are never even any fights. We respect each other’s freedom. If we didn’t respect other people’s freedom, why would we be sleeping under the bridges?’
He looked at her more closely now and noticed that her eyes were a little red, her complexion brighter than the day before.
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Just enough to pick me up.’
‘What do your friends say?’
‘They don’t say anything. When you’ve seen it all, there’s no enjoyment in gossip.’
As Maigret was about to walk through the front door, she asked him:
‘Can I wait for you to come out? I’d like to know how he is.’
‘I may be a long time.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I might as well be here as anywhere else.’
She had regained her good humour and childlike smile.
‘I don’t suppose you have a cigarette?’
He showed her his pipe.
‘A pinch of tobacco, then. If I can’t smoke, I can chew …’
He took the lift at the same time as a patient lying on a stretcher and two nurses. On the third floor, he ran into the head nurse just as she was coming out of one of the wards.
‘You know where it is. I’ll be with you in a moment. I’m wanted in emergency.’
The patients in their beds turned to look at him, as they had the previous day. They seemed to recognize him already. He headed for Dr Keller’s bed, his hat in his hand, and at last discovered a face with only a few plasters left on it.
The man had been shaved the day before and looked almost nothing like his photograph. His features were hollow, his complexion lacklustre, his lips thin and pale. What struck Maigret most was being suddenly confronted with his gaze.
Because there was no doubt about it: Doc was looking at him, and it wasn’t the look of a man who is unaware of things.
It embarrassed him to remain silent. But on the other hand, he didn’t know what to say. There was a chair beside the bed, and he sat down on it and asked awkwardly:
‘Are you feeling better?’
He was sure that the words were not going to be lost in the fog, that they were registered and understood. But the eyes, still fixed on him, did not move and expressed nothing but complete indifference.
‘Can you hear me, Dr Keller?’
It was the beginning of a long and dispiriting battle.
5.
Maigret rarely talked to his wife about a case while it was in progress. In fact, most of the time he didn’t even discuss it with his closest colleagues, content merely to give his instructions. It was all part of the way he worked, trying to understand, to gradually immerse himself in the lives of people he hadn’t known the day before.
‘What do you think, Maigret?’ he had often been asked by an examining magistrate when the prosecutor’s office visited a crime scene or staged a reconstruction.
His invariable reply was well known at the Palais de Justice:
‘I never think.’
And someone had retorted one day:
‘He soaks it all in.’
It was true in a way. Words were too precise for him, which was why he preferred to keep quiet.
It was different this time, at least where Madame Maigret was concerned, perhaps because she had given him a hand, thanks to her sister who lived in Mulhouse. Sitting down at the table for lunch, he announced:
‘I made Keller’s acquaintance this morning.’
She was quite surprised. Not only because he was the first to speak of it, but because of his cheerful tone. ‘Cheerful’ wasn’t quite the right word. Nor was ‘jolly’. All the same, there was a touch of lightness, a kind of good humour in his voice and his eyes.
For once, the newspapers weren’t harassing him, and the deputy prosecutor and the examining magistrate were leaving him in peace. A tramp had been assaulted under Pont Marie and thrown into the rising Seine, but he had miraculously survived, and Professor Magnin couldn’t get over his powers of recovery.
In short, it was a crime without a victim, almost without a perpetrator, and nobody really cared about Doc, apart from Fat Léa and, perhaps, two or three other tramps.
Yet Maigret was devoting as much of his time to this case as he would to a drama keeping the whole of France agog. He seemed to be making it a personal matter, and from the way he had just announced his encounter with Keller, it was almost as if he was talking about someone he and his wife had been anxious to meet for a long time.
‘Has he regained consciousness?’ Madame Maigret asked, taking care not to show too much interest.
‘Yes and no. He didn’t say a word. He just looked at me, but I’m convinced he understood everything I said to him. The head nurse doesn’t agree. She says he’s still dazed by the drugs he’s been given and that he’s in the same state as a boxer getting up after a knockout.’
As he ate, he looked through the window and listened to the birds.
‘Do you get the feeling he knows the person who attacked him?’
Maigret sighed and finally gave a slight smile that was unlike him, a mocking smile whose mockery was aimed at himself.
‘I have no idea. I’d find it hard to explain the feeling I got.’
He had seldom been as disorientated in his life as he had been that morning, at the Hôtel-Dieu, or quite as fascinated by a problem.
The conditions of the interview were already quite unfavourable. It had taken place in a ward with a dozen patients lying in their beds and three or four seated or standing by the window. Some were in pain, in a serious condition, bells rang constantly, and a nurse came and went, bending over this bed or that.
With a greater or lesser degree of insistence, everyone was watching Maigret sitting beside Keller, and they were all ears.
Last but not least, the head nurse would appear at the door from time to time and watch them with an uneasy, discontented air.
‘You mustn’t stay too long,’ she had advised him. ‘Avoid tiring him.’
Bent over the tramp, Maigret spoke in a low, gentle voice, in a kind of murmur.
‘Can you hear me, Monsieur Keller? Do you remember what happened to you on Monday night, when you were lying under Pont Marie?’
Not a feature on the wounded man’s face moved, but Maigret was only interested in his eyes, which expressed neither fear nor anxiety. They were faded grey eyes, eyes that had seen a lot and appeared worn out.
‘Were you asleep when you were assaulted?’
Doc made no attempt to take his eyes off him, and a curious thing was happening: it wasn’t Maigret who seemed to be studying Keller, but Keller who was studying Maigret.
This impression was so disturbing that Maigret felt the need to introduce himself.
‘My name is Maigret. I’m in charge of the Crime Squad at the Police Judiciaire. I’m trying to understand what happened to you. I’ve seen your wife, your daughter, the bargees who took you out of the Seine …’
Doc hadn’t reacted at the mention of his wife and daughter, but Maigret would have sworn there had been a gleam of irony in his eyes.
‘Are you unable to speak?’
He didn’t try to respond with a movement of the head, however slight, or a flicker of the eyelids.
‘Are you aware that you’re being spoken to?’
Oh, yes! Maigret was sure he wasn’t mistaken. Not only was Keller aware of it, but he wasn’t losing any nuance of the words uttered.
‘Does it bother you that I’m questioning you in this ward where other patients can hear us?’
Then, as if to win the tramp over, he took the trouble to explain:
‘I’d have liked you to have a private room. Unfortunately, that involves complicated administrative matters. We can’t pay for a room like that on our budget.’
Paradoxically, things would have been easier if, instead of being the victim, the doctor had been the assailant, or simply a suspect. When it came to the victim, there was no provision.
‘I’m going to be obliged to bring your wife here, because she needs to formally identify you. Would it upset you to see her again?’
Keller’s lips moved a little but emitted no sound, and there was neither a grimace nor a smile.
‘Do you feel well enough for me to ask her to come by this morning?’
The man made no objection, and Maigret took the opportunity to pause. He felt hot. It was stifling in this ward, with its smell of illness and medications.
‘Can I make a phone call?’ he went and asked the head nurse.
‘Are you going to keep tormenting him?’
‘His wife has to identify him. It’ll only take a few minutes.’
All this he recounted as best he could to Madame Maigret, as they had lunch by the window.
‘She was at home,’ he went on. ‘She promised to come immediately. I gave instructions downstairs for her to be admitted. Then I went for a walk in the corridor, and after a while Professor Magnin joined me.’
The two men had talked, standing by a window that looked out on the courtyard.
‘Do you also think his mind has cleared?’ Maigret had asked.
‘It’s possible. When I examined him earlier, I had the impression he knew what was going on around him. But medically, I can’t yet give you a categorical answer. People imagine we’re infallible and can answer every question. But most of the time we’re just feeling our way. I’ve asked a neurologist to see him this afternoon.’
‘I suppose it’s difficult to put him in a private room?’
‘It’s not only difficult, it’s impossible. Everything’s full. In some departments, we’ve been forced to set up beds in the corridors … Or else we’d have to transfer him to a private clinic.’
‘What if his wife suggested that?’
‘Do you think he’d like it?’
It was highly unlikely. Keller hadn’t chosen to leave home and live rough in order to again be dependent on his wife, all because of an assault.
Madame Keller emerged from the lift and looked around her, disorientated. Maigret went over to greet her.
‘How is he?’
She wasn’t too anxious or upset. The most obvious impression was that she felt out of place and was in a hurry to get back to her apartment on Ile Saint-Louis and her budgerigars.
‘He’s calm.’
‘Has he regained consciousness?’
‘I think so, but I can’t prove it.’
‘Should I talk to him?’
He let her walk ahead of him, and all the patients watched her as she advanced across the polished wooden floor of the ward. For her part, she was searching for her husband, and of her own accord she headed for the fifth bed, then stopped two or three metres from it, as if she didn’t know what attitude to adopt.
Keller had seen her and was looking at her, still indifferent.
She was very well dressed in a beige shantung tailored suit, with a matching hat, and her perfume mingled with the smells of the ward.
‘Do you recognize him?’
‘It’s him, yes. He’s changed, but it’s him.’
There was another silence, which was painful for all of them. She finally summoned up her courage and went closer. Nervously fingering the clasp of her handbag with her gloved hands, she said:
‘It’s me, François. I always thought I’d find you in such an unfortunate condition one of these days. Apparently, you’re going to make a speedy recovery. I’d like to help you.’
What was he thinking, looking at her like that? For seventeen or eighteen years, he had been living in another world. It was rather as if he had resurfaced only to find himself face to face with a past he had fled.
There was no bitterness visible on his face. He merely looked at the woman who for a long time had been his wife, then turned his head slightly to make sure that Maigret was still there.
As Maigret put it now to his wife:
‘I’d swear he was asking me to put an end to this confrontation.’
‘You talk about him as if you’ve known him for a long time.’
Wasn’t that true in a way? Maigret had never met Keller before, but hadn’t he, in the course of his career, had the opportunity to hear the confessions of many men like him in the privacy of his office? Perhaps not such extreme cases. But the human problem was the same.
‘She didn’t insist on staying,’ he recounted. ‘Before leaving him, she almost opened her bag to take out some money. Fortunately, she didn’t. In the corridor, she asked me, “Do you think he needs anything?” And, when I said no, she insisted, “Perhaps I could give the hospital director some money to help him out? He’d be better off in a private room.” “There isn’t one free,” I told her. She accepted that. “What should I do?” “Nothing for the moment. I’ll send an inspector to your apartment who’ll get you to sign a paper acknowledging that you’ve identified this man as your husband.” “What’s the point, since it’s him?” She finally left …’
They had finished eating and now sat with their coffees. Maigret had lit his pipe.
‘Did you go back to the ward?’
‘Yes. In spite of the reproachful looks I got from the head nurse.’
She had become a kind of personal enemy.
‘Did he talk at all this time?’
‘No. I was the only one talking, in a low voice, with an intern treating the patient in the next bed.’
‘What did you say to him?’
For Madame Maigret, this conversation over coffee was almost miraculous. Usually, she barely knew what case her husband was dealing with. He would phone her to tell her he wouldn’t be back for lunch or dinner, sometimes that he would be spending part of the night in his office or somewhere else, and mostly it was through the newspapers that she learned more.
‘I can’t remember what I said to him,’ he replied, his face clouding over slightly. ‘I was trying to gain his trust. I told him that Léa was waiting for me outside, I told him we’d put his things in a safe place and that he’d get them back when he left hospital. That seemed to please him. I also told him that he wouldn’t have to see his wife again if he didn’t want to, that she’d offered to pay for a private room for him, but there were none available. From a distance I must have looked as if I was saying the rosary. I said, “I suppose you’d rather stay here than go to a clinic?” ’
‘And he still didn’t reply?’
Maigret was embarrassed.
‘I know it’s stupid, but I’m sure he a
greed with me, that we understood each other. I tried to get back to the night of the assault. I asked him, “Were you asleep?” It was a bit like a cat and mouse game. I’m convinced he’s decided once and for all not to say anything. And a man who was capable of living rough for so long is quite capable of keeping quiet.’
‘Why would he keep quiet?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘To avoid accusing someone?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Who?’
Shrugging his broad shoulders, Maigret stood up.
‘If I knew that, I’d be God the Father. I feel like answering you the way Professor Magnin answered me: I can’t perform miracles either.’
‘So in the end, you didn’t learn anything new?’
‘No.’
That wasn’t quite accurate. He was convinced that he had learned a lot about Doc. Although he hadn’t yet started to really know him, there had nevertheless been some fleeting and somewhat mysterious contacts between them.
‘There was one moment …’
He hesitated, as if afraid of being accused of childishness. Too bad! He needed to speak.
‘There was one moment when I took the marble from my pocket. To tell the truth, I didn’t do it consciously. I felt it in my hand, and it occurred to me to slip it into his. I probably looked a bit ridiculous. But in fact, he didn’t need to look at it. He recognized it from the touch. Whatever the nurse says, I’m sure his face lit up, and there was a wicked, happy gleam in his eyes.’
‘But he still didn’t say anything?’
‘That’s another matter. He’s not going to help me … He’s made up his mind not to help me, not to say anything, and I’ll have to discover the truth for myself.’
Was it the challenge that excited him? His wife had seldom seen him so lively, so fascinated by a case.
‘Downstairs, I ran into Léa again. She was waiting for me outside, chewing my tobacco. I gave her the contents of my pouch.’
‘You don’t think she knows anything?’
‘If she did, she’d tell me. There’s more solidarity among these people than there is among normal people who live in houses. I’m sure they’re questioning each other right now, conducting their little investigation on the fringes of mine … She did tell me one thing that might be interesting: that Keller hasn’t always slept under Pont Marie and has only been a local, if I can put it that way, for the past two years.’
Maigret and the Tramp Page 7
