Maigret at Picratt's

by Georges Simenon

  ‘One of whom was called Albert?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know him either. I only know people by sight.’

  ‘Including Oscar?’

  ‘Why do you keep saying that name?’

  ‘Would you recognize him?’

  ‘I only saw him from behind.’

  ‘A person’s back can be very easy to recognize.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’

  Struck by a sudden thought, it was her turn to ask, ‘Has someone been killed?’

  When he didn’t answer, she became very nervous. She must have had a terrible hangover. The blue of her eyes was washed out, somehow, and her smudged lipstick made her mouth look enormous.

  ‘Can’t I go home?’

  ‘Not right now.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  There were a number of policemen in the room now, getting on with their work and swapping stories. Jacquart called the Police Emergency Service, who hadn’t heard anything about a dead countess yet, then, to cover his back, telephoned Quai des Orfèvres. Lucas, who had just come on duty and wasn’t completely awake, replied, just in case:

  ‘Send her over to me.’

  After which he didn’t give it another thought. Maigret arrived soon after and glanced through the night’s reports before taking off his overcoat and hat.

  It was still raining. It was a clammy day. Most people were in a bad mood that morning.

  A few minutes after nine o’clock, a Ninth Arrondissement policeman brought Arlette to Quai des Orfèvres. He was a new recruit who wasn’t familiar with the building yet and knocked on several doors, as the young woman trailed behind.

  This was how he came to knock on the door of the inspectors’ office, where young Lapointe was smoking a cigarette, perched on the edge of a desk.

  ‘Sergeant Lucas, please?’

  He didn’t notice Lapointe and Arlette looking at each other intently and when he was directed to the neighbouring office he shut the door again.

  ‘Sit down,’ Lucas said to the dancer.

  Maigret, who was doing his usual rounds while waiting for the briefing, happened to be in Lucas’ office, standing by the fireplace, filling a pipe.

  ‘This girl,’ Lucas explained to him, ‘claims to have heard two men plotting to murder a countess.’

  She was very different to how she had been before: in a clear, almost shrill voice, she replied:

  ‘I never said that.’

  ‘You said you had heard two men …’

  ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘So you made it all up?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was feeling blue. I was bored at the thought of going home and sort of went into the police station by accident.’

  Maigret gave her a curious glance, then carried on looking through some papers.

  ‘So there’s never been a mention of a countess?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘None whatsoever?’

  ‘Maybe I heard someone talking about a countess. You know, sometimes a word jumps out when people are talking, and it sticks in your mind.’

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘And that’s what you based your story on?’

  ‘What, do you always know what you’re saying when you’ve been drinking?’

  Maigret smiled. Lucas looked annoyed.

  ‘Don’t you know it’s a crime?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To make a false statement. You could be prosecuted for wasting …’

  ‘I don’t care. All I’m asking is to be able to go to bed.’

  ‘Do you live on your own?’

  ‘Of course!’

  Maigret smiled again.

  ‘You’ve no memory either of the customer who you drank a bottle of champagne with and who held your hands, a man by the name of Albert?’

  ‘I can barely remember anything. Do I have to do you a drawing? Everyone at Picratt’s will tell you I was dead drunk.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘I’d got started yesterday evening, if you want all the details.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘By myself.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘All over, really. Different bars. You can tell you’ve never lived on your own.’

  It was a funny thing to say about young Lucas, when he was trying so hard to look stern.

  Judging from the weather so far, it was going to rain all day, a cold, monotonous rain falling from a low sky, with the lights on in all the offices and damp patches on the floors.

  Lucas was dealing with another case, a break-in at a warehouse on Quai de Javel, and he was in a hurry to get going. He looked questioningly at Maigret.

  ‘What do I do with her?’ he seemed to ask.

  As the bell for the briefing rang at that moment, Maigret just shrugged, as if to say: ‘It’s your case.’

  ‘Do you have a telephone?’ the sergeant asked again.

  ‘There’s a telephone in the concierge’s lodge.’

  ‘Do you rent a room?’

  ‘No. I have my own apartment.’

  ‘By yourself?’

  ‘I’ve already said that.’

  ‘You’re not scared you’ll run into Oscar if I let you go?’

  ‘I want to go home.’

  She couldn’t be detained indefinitely for making up a story in her local police station.

  ‘Call me if he shows up again,’ declared Lucas, getting to his feet. ‘I assume you’re not planning on leaving town?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  He opened the door for her and watched her walk away down the huge corridor, then hesitate at the top of the stairs. Heads turned as she passed. You sensed she came from a different world, the world of the night, and there was something almost indecent about her in the harsh light of a winter’s day.

  In his office, Lucas inhaled the smell she had left behind her, a woman’s smell, almost the smell of bed. He telephoned the Police Emergency Service again.

  ‘No countess?’

  ‘Nothing to report.’

  Then he opened the door of the inspectors’ office.

  ‘Lapointe …’ he called without looking.

  A voice, not the young inspector’s, replied:

  ‘He’s just popped out.’

  ‘He didn’t say where he was going?’

  ‘He said he’d be back straight away.’

  ‘Tell him I need him. Not about Arlette or the countess, but to come to Javel with me.’

  Lapointe returned a quarter of an hour later. The two men put on their coats and hats and went and caught the Métro at Châtelet.

  When Maigret left the commissioner’s office, where the daily briefing had been held, he settled down in front of a stack of files, lit a pipe and promised himself not to stir all morning.

  It must have been around 9.30 when Arlette left the Police Judiciaire. No one spared a thought as to whether she had taken the Métro or bus to get to Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.

  Maybe she stopped at a bar to eat a croissant and drink a café-crème?

  The concierge didn’t see her get back. It was a busy building, it’s true, just round the corner from Place Saint-Georges.

  Eleven o’clock was just about to strike when the concierge set about sweeping Building B’s stairs and was surprised to see Arlette’s door ajar.

  At Javel, meanwhile, Lapointe was distracted and preoccupied. Thinking he looked strange, Lucas asked him if he didn’t feel well.

  ‘I think I’m coming down with a cold.’

  The two men were still questioning the neighbours of the burgled warehouse when the telephone rang in Maigret’s office.

  ‘This is the detective chief inspector, Saint-Georges district.’

  It was the station on Rue de La Rochefoucauld, which Arlette had gone into at about 4.30 that morning and ended up falling asleep on a bench.

  ‘My secretary tells me we sent over to you t
his morning a girl called Jeanne Leleu, known as Arlette, who claimed to have overheard a conversation about the murder of a countess.’

  ‘I think I know who you mean,’ replied Maigret, frowning. ‘Is she dead?’

  ‘Yes. She’s just been found strangled in her bedroom.’

  ‘Was she in bed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Dressed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In her coat?’

  ‘No. She was wearing a black silk dress. At least that’s what my men told me a minute ago. I haven’t gone over there yet. I wanted to telephone you first. It seems that there was something in it after all.’

  ‘It certainly does.’

  ‘Still no news of the countess?’

  ‘Nothing so far. It may take a while.’

  ‘Are you going to see that the prosecutor’s informed?’

  ‘I’ll telephone now, then head over.’

  ‘I think that would be better. Strange business, isn’t it? My night sergeant wasn’t too concerned because she was drunk. See you in a moment.’

  ‘See you then.’

  Maigret wanted to take Lucas with him but, finding his office empty, he remembered the Javel business. Lapointe wasn’t around either. Janvier had just got back and was still wearing his cold, wet raincoat.

  ‘Come on!’

  He crammed two pipes in his pocket, as always.

  2.

  Janvier pulled the Police Judiciare’s little car over to the kerb, and both men craned forwards simultaneously in their seats to check the number of the building, then looked at one another in surprise. There was no throng of people on the pavement, or under the arch, or in the courtyard, and the police officer, whom the local station had sent out of habit to keep order, was idly pacing up and down a little way off.

  They would soon discover the reason for this aberration. The local detective chief inspector, Monsieur Beulant, opened the door of the lodge to greet them, and at his side stood the concierge, a tall, calm, intelligent-looking woman.

  ‘Madame Boué,’ he said, by way of introduction. ‘She is married to one of our sergeants. When she discovered the body, she locked the door with her master key and came down to telephone me. No one in the building knows yet.’

  She inclined her head slightly, as if being given a compliment.

  ‘Isn’t there anyone up there?’ asked Maigret.

  ‘Inspector Lognon went up with the doctor from Public Records. In the meantime I’ve been having a long conversation with Madame Boué, and we have both been trying to work out who this countess might be.’

  ‘I can’t think of any countess round here,’ she said.

  It was clear from her manner and the way she talked that she was intent on being a model witness.

  ‘There was no harm in that girl. We didn’t have many dealings, because she used to come home in the early hours and sleep most of the day.’

  ‘Had she been living in the block for long?’

  ‘Two years. She had a two-room apartment in Building B at the end of the courtyard.’

  ‘Did she have many visitors?’

  ‘None, really.’

  ‘Any men?’

  ‘If there were, I didn’t see them. Except at the start. When she moved in and her furniture arrived, once or twice I saw an older man who I thought was her father for a moment, a short fellow with very broad shoulders. He never spoke to me. As far as I know, he hasn’t been back since. A lot of the building is rented, especially the offices in Building A, and there’s always people coming and going.’

  ‘I’ll probably be back for a chat soon.’

  The building was old. Under the archway a staircase led off to the left and another to the right, both of them dark, with plaques in imitation marble or enamel on the walls advertising a ladies’ hairdressers on the mezzanine, a masseuse on the second floor, and on the third, an artificial flower business, a law firm and even an extra-lucid clairvoyant. The courtyard’s cobbles glistened with rain, and the door facing them had a black ‘B’ painted above it.

  They went up three floors, leaving dark footprints on the stairs. Only one of the doors opened as they passed, that of a stout woman with thinning hair in curlers, who looked at them with astonishment, then shut her door and locked it.

  Inspector Lognon from the Saint-Georges station greeted them, as lugubrious as ever, and gave Maigret a look as if to say: ‘I knew it!’

  What he knew wasn’t that the young woman would be strangled but that, the minute a crime was committed in his neighbourhood and Lognon sent to the scene, Maigret would immediately arrive in person and take the case out of his hands.

  ‘I haven’t touched anything,’ he said in his most official manner. ‘The doctor is still in the bedroom.’

  No apartment would have looked cheerful in that weather. It was one of those bleak days when you wonder what you’re on earth for in the first place and why you’re going to so much trouble to stay here.

  The first room was a sitting room of a sort, nicely furnished, meticulously clean and, unexpectedly, as neat as a pin. Maigret was immediately struck by the floor, which was waxed as carefully as in a convent and gave off a pleasant smell of floor polish. He made a note to ask the concierge later if Arlette did the housework herself.

  Through the half-open door, Doctor Pasquier could be seen putting his overcoat back on and replacing his instruments in his bag. On the white goatskin rug at the foot of the untouched bed, a body was stretched out: black satin dress, chalk white arm, auburn hair.

  What is most moving is always an absurd detail and, in this case, what caused Maigret a momentary stab of anguish was, next to a foot still in its high heel, a foot out of its shoe, the toes visible through a silk stocking which was covered with flecks of mud and had a ladder starting at the heel and going up over the knee.

  ‘Dead, obviously,’ said the doctor. ‘The guy who did it didn’t let go until the end.’

  ‘Can you work out when it happened?’

  ‘Barely an hour and a half ago. Rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet.’

  Near the bed, behind the door, Maigret had noticed an open wardrobe full of dresses, particularly evening dresses, mainly black.

  ‘You think she was grabbed from behind?’

  ‘Probably, because I don’t see any signs of a struggle. Do I send my report to you, Monsieur Maigret?’

  ‘If you don’t mind.’

  The pretty bedroom wasn’t what you would expect of a cabaret dancer’s. As in the sitting room, everything was in its place except for the faux mink coat tossed on the bed and the handbag on an armchair.

  Maigret explained:

  ‘She left Quai des Orfèvres around nine thirty. If she took a taxi, she got here around ten o’clock. If she came by Métro or bus, she probably got back a little later. She was attacked immediately.’

  He went over to the wardrobe, inspected the bottom.

  ‘Someone was waiting for her. Someone was hidden here, who grabbed her by the throat as soon as she took off her coat.’

  It had only just happened. It was rare for them to have a chance to be on a crime scene so quickly.

  ‘You don’t need me any more, do you?’ asked the doctor.

  He took his leave. The local police chief also asked if he needed to stay until the public prosecutor got there and wasted no time getting back to his office, which was minutes away. As for Lognon, he was expecting to be told he wasn’t needed either and was standing in a corner with a sullen expression.

  ‘Have you found anything?’ Maigret asked him, filling his pipe.

  ‘I glanced in the drawers. Look at the left-hand one in the chest of drawers.’

  It was full of photographs, all of Arlette. Some were publicity shots like the ones outside Picratt’s. They showed her in a black silk dress, not the day dress that was on her body now, but a very tight-fitting evening dress.

  ‘You’re a local, Lognon. Did you see her act?’

  ‘I didn’t, but
I know what it involved. As far as dancing went, as you can tell from the photos on top there, she wiggled about more or less in time with the music while slowly taking off her dress. She didn’t wear anything underneath. By the end of the act she was as naked as the day she was born.’

  Lognon’s long, bulbous nose seemed to be twitching and going red.

  ‘Apparently it’s what they do in America in the burlesques. When she was wearing nothing at all, the lights went out.’

  He hesitated, then added, ‘You should look under her dress.’

  While Maigret stalled, surprised, he explained, ‘The doctor who examined her called me to show me. She is completely shaved. Even in the street she didn’t wear anything underneath.’

  Why were all three of them embarrassed? Without a word, they avoided looking at the body lying on the goatskin rug, which still had something vaguely lascivious about it. Maigret merely glanced at the other photographs, which were in a smaller format, probably taken with an ordinary camera, and showed the young woman, naked throughout, in sexual poses.

  ‘Try to find me an envelope,’ he said.

  That idiot Lognon sniggered silently at this, as if he were accusing Maigret of taking the photos so he could titillate himself at his leisure in his office.

  Next door Janvier had begun a meticulous inspection of the apartment: everywhere showed the same mismatch between what met the eye and these photographs, between Arlette’s home and her professional life.

  In a cupboard, they found a paraffin stove, two very clean saucepans and a selection of plates, cups and cutlery, indicating that she did at least some of her cooking. Hanging from the window over the courtyard, a meat-safe contained eggs, butter, some celery and two cutlets.

  Another cupboard was crammed with brooms, cloths and tins of floor polish, all of which suggested an orderly existence, a housekeeper proud of her home, if not a shade over-zealous.

  They looked for letters or papers, without success. A few magazines were lying about, but no books, other than a cookbook and a dictionary. None of those photographs of parents, friends or lovers that you find in most homes either.

  There were lots of pairs of shoes with exaggeratedly high heels, the majority virtually brand new, as if Arlette were crazy about shoes or had sensitive feet and found it difficult to get the right fit.

  In the handbag, a compact, some keys, a lipstick, an identity card and a handkerchief without initials. Maigret put the identity card in his pocket. Feeling ill at ease in those two cramped rooms, with the radiators blasting out heat, he turned to Janvier.