Maigret at Picratt's

by Georges Simenon

  That made her laugh.

  ‘Do you know anything about the countess?’

  ‘What countess?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Can you give me the Grasshopper’s address? What’s his real name?’

  ‘Thomas … He has no surname … He was brought up in care. I can’t tell you where he rests his head, but you’ll find him at the races this afternoon. That’s the only thing he cares about. Another one?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Do you think journalists are going to show up?’

  ‘I daresay. When they find out.’

  It was difficult to tell if Fred was delighted or annoyed by the publicity this would bring him.

  ‘Either way, I’m here if you need me. I suppose it’s better if I open as usual tonight. If you want to drop by, you can question everyone.’

  When Maigret got to Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the prosecutor’s car had gone and an ambulance was driving off with the young woman’s body. There was a little group of gawkers at the door, but fewer than one might have imagined. He found Janvier in the concierge’s lodge, talking on the telephone. When the inspector hung up, he reported:

  ‘We’ve already had word from Moulins. The Leleus are both still alive, father and mother, and there’s a son who works in a bank. As for Jeanne Leleu, the daughter, she’s a little brunette with a flat nose who left home three years ago and hasn’t sent word since. The parents don’t want to hear her name ever again.’

  ‘The description doesn’t fit at all?’

  ‘Not at all. She is five centimetres shorter than Arlette and is unlikely to have had her nose straightened.’

  ‘No calls about the countess?’

  ‘Nothing on that. I’ve questioned the tenants of B. There’s a lot of them. The big blonde who watched us going up checks coats at a theatre. She claims not to take any notice of what goes in the building, but she did hear someone go past a few minutes before the girl.’

  ‘So she heard her go up? How did she recognize it was her?’

  ‘By her walk, she says. In fact her door’s open a crack the whole time.’

  ‘Did she see the man?’

  ‘She says she didn’t, but that he climbed the stairs slowly, like someone who was heavyset or a man suffering from a bad heart.’

  ‘She didn’t hear him come back down?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s sure it wasn’t a tenant from the upper floors?’

  ‘She recognizes all the tenants by their tread. I saw Arlette’s neighbour as well, a waitress. I had to wake her up, but she hadn’t heard anything.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Lucas rang to say he’s back at the office, awaiting orders.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  ‘We only lifted ours and Arlette’s. You’ll have the report this evening.’

  ‘Do you have a tenant called Oscar?’ Maigret asked the concierge on the off-chance.

  ‘No, detective chief inspector. But once, a very long time ago, I took a telephone message for Arlette. A man’s voice, with a sort of country accent, said: “Will you tell her Oscar is waiting for her? She’ll know where.”’

  ‘How long ago, roughly, was that?’

  ‘It was a month or two after she had moved in. It struck me because it’s the only message I took for her.’

  ‘Did she get post?’

  ‘Letters from Brussels now and then.’

  ‘In a man’s hand?’

  ‘A woman’s. It wasn’t an educated person’s handwriting either.’

  Half an hour later, Maigret and Janvier, who had had a quick glass of beer at the Brasserie Dauphine, were climbing the stairs at Quai des Orfèvres.

  Maigret had barely opened the door of his office when young Lapointe burst in, red-eyed, a frenzied look on his face.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you right away, chief.’

  When Maigret stepped away from the wardrobe where he had hung up his hat and overcoat, he saw that Lapointe was biting his lips and clenching his fists to stop himself bursting into tears.

  3.

  Turning away from Maigret, his face almost pressed against the window, Lapointe mumbled:

  ‘When I saw her here this morning, I wondered why she’d been brought in. On our way to Javel, Sergeant Lucas told me what happened. And now, when I get back to the office, I find out she’s dead.’

  Maigret, who had sat down, said slowly, ‘I’d forgotten you’re called Albert.’

  ‘After what she’d told him, Monsieur Lucas shouldn’t have let her go off by herself, without anybody watching her at all.’

  He spoke in the voice of a sulky child, and Maigret smiled.

  ‘Come over here and sit down.’

  Lapointe hesitated, as if he was angry with Maigret too. Then, grudgingly, he came and sat down in the chair facing the desk. He still didn’t raise his head, staring fixedly at the floor, and, with Maigret gravely taking little draws on his pipe, they looked a bit like a father and son in solemn conversation.

  ‘You haven’t been part of the force for very long, but you should know by now that if we had to put everyone who informs on a person under surveillance, you’d never have time to sleep or even grab a sandwich, would you?’

  ‘Yes, chief. But …’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘It wasn’t the same with her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You can see it wasn’t just finger-pointing.’

  ‘Let’s hear it, now you’re calmer …’

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘How I met her?’

  ‘If you like. Start at the beginning.’

  ‘I was with a friend from Meulan, a schoolmate, who doesn’t get the chance to come to Paris much. We went out with my sister first, then we saw her home, and the two of us went to Montmartre. You know how it is. We had a drink in a couple of clubs and when we came out of the last one, a sort of gnome slipped a flyer into our hands.’

  ‘Why do you say a sort of gnome?’

  ‘Because he looks fourteen but his face is covered with tiny wrinkles, like a worn-out old man. He’s the build and height of a street urchin, I suppose that’s why they call him the Grasshopper. My friend had been disappointed by the other cabarets, so I thought Picratt’s would have something racier on offer, and we went in.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  He thought back and seemed amazed and saddened somehow by the result. He had no choice but to reply:

  ‘Three weeks.’

  ‘You met Arlette?’

  ‘She came and sat down at our table. My friend, who doesn’t know how it all works, thought she was a tart. We had an argument as we left.’

  ‘About her?’

  ‘Yes. I’d already realized she wasn’t like the rest.’

  Maigret listened without smiling, meticulously cleaning one of his pipes.

  ‘You went back the following night?’

  ‘I wanted to apologize for the way my friend had spoken to her.’

  ‘What did he say to her exactly?’

  ‘He offered her money to sleep with him.’

  ‘She refused?’

  ‘Of course. I went early to be sure there’d be hardly anyone there, and she agreed to have a drink with me.’

  ‘A drink or a bottle?’

  ‘A bottle. The boss doesn’t let them sit at a table with customers if you only buy them a drink. And you’ve got to have champagne.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. Still, she came here to tell us what she knew and now she’s been strangled.’

  ‘Did she talk of being in any danger?’

  ‘Not exactly. But I knew there were mysterious things in her life.’

  ‘What, for instance?’

  ‘It’s difficult to explain, and no one will believe me, because I loved her.’

  He said this in an even lower voice, raising his head and looking Maigret in the eye, ready to
lash out at any hint of irony.

  ‘I wanted to offer her a new life.’

  ‘Marry her?’

  Lapointe hesitated, embarrassed.

  ‘I didn’t think of that. I probably wouldn’t have married her straight away.’

  ‘But you didn’t want her to appear naked in a cabaret any more?’

  ‘I was sure it was making her suffer.’

  ‘She said it was?’

  ‘It’s more complicated than that, chief. I realize you’d see the set-up differently. I’m the same, I know the kind of women you meet in those places.

  ‘For a start it was very difficult to know exactly what she was thinking, because she drank. Normally they don’t – I’m sure you’d say the same. They pretend to, to get people drinking, but they’re given a little glass of some kind of syrup that’s meant to look like a liqueur. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘Almost always.’

  ‘Arlette drank because she needed to drink. Almost every evening. To the point where, before she did her act, the owner, Monsieur Fred, had to come and check she could stand up.’

  Lapointe had become such a part of Picratt’s in his mind that he said ‘Monsieur Fred’, probably as the staff did.

  ‘You never stayed until the morning?’

  ‘She didn’t want me to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’d told her that I had to get up early for work.’

  ‘Did you also tell her that you were in the police?’

  He blushed again.

  ‘No. I did tell her about my sister though, who I live with, and she used to order me to go home. I never gave her any money. She wouldn’t have accepted it. She’d only allow me to buy one bottle, never any more, and always chose the cheapest champagne.’

  ‘You think she was in love?’

  ‘Last night I was sure she was.’

  ‘Why? What did you talk about?’

  ‘Always the same thing, her and me.’

  ‘Did she tell you about herself, what her family did?’

  ‘She made no bones of the fact that she had a fake identity card and that it would be very bad if anyone found out her real name.’

  ‘Was she cultured?’

  ‘I don’t know. She definitely wasn’t born for that trade. She didn’t tell me about her life. She only said that there was a man who she would never be able to get rid of and that it was her fault, that it was too late, that I shouldn’t come and see her any more, there was no point, it just hurt her. That’s why I say she was falling in love with me. Her hands were clasped in mine as she talked.’

  ‘Was she drunk by then?’

  ‘Maybe. She had definitely been drinking, but she was thinking perfectly clearly. I almost always saw her like that: tense, with a look in her eyes that was either sad or over-excited.’

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  There was almost hatred in the look he shot Maigret.

  ‘No!’

  ‘You didn’t ask her to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She didn’t offer either?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Did she make you think she was a virgin?’

  ‘She’d had to go along with men. She hated them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because of what?’

  ‘Because of what they had done to her. It was when she was very young, I don’t know the details, but it scarred her. She was haunted by a memory. She always talked to me about a man she was very scared of.’

  ‘Oscar?’

  ‘She didn’t say his name. You’re convinced that she was making fun of me and that I’m naive, aren’t you? I don’t care. She is dead, and that proves at least that she was right to be scared.’

  ‘You never wanted to sleep with her?’

  ‘The first night I did,’ he admitted, ‘when I was with my friend. Did you see her when she was alive? Oh yes, just for a few minutes, this morning, when she was exhausted. If you’d seen her under different circumstances, you’d understand … Other women don’t …’

  ‘They don’t …?’

  ‘It’s too hard to put into words. Everyone was attracted to her. When she did her act …’

  ‘Did she sleep with Fred?’

  ‘She had to submit to him, like the others.’

  Maigret tried to find out how open Arlette had been.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the kitchen. Rose knew. She didn’t dare say anything because she is very scared of losing her husband. Have you met her?’

  Maigret nodded.

  ‘Did she tell you how old she is?’

  ‘She’s in her fifties, I guess.’

  ‘She’s nearly seventy. Fred’s twenty years younger than her. Apparently she was one of the most beautiful women of her generation and used to be kept by a string of very wealthy men. She really loves him. She doesn’t dare show any jealousy and tries to make sure it happens in the club. She thinks it’s less risky, you understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Arlette scared her more than the others, and she was always watching her. But in a way it was Arlette who made the club work. Without her, no one will go any more. The others are the sort of nice girls you find in every cabaret in Montmartre.’

  ‘What happened last night?’

  ‘Did she talk about it?’

  ‘She told Lucas that you were with her, but she only mentioned your first name.’

  ‘I stayed until two-thirty.’

  ‘At what table?’

  ‘Six.’

  He spoke like a regular, almost as if he worked there.

  ‘Were there are any customers in the next booth?’

  ‘Not at four. A whole gang turned up at eight and made a hell of a racket.’

  ‘So that if there had been someone on four, you wouldn’t have noticed?’

  ‘I would. I didn’t want anyone to hear what I was saying and I kept getting up to look over the partition.’

  ‘You didn’t notice a middle-aged man, short and sturdy, with grey hair, at any of the tables?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘As you were talking to her, did Arlette seem to be listening to any other conversation?’

  ‘I’m sure she wasn’t. Why?’

  ‘Do you want to work on the investigation with me?’

  He looked at Maigret in surprise, then suddenly, overflowing with gratitude, exclaimed:

  ‘You don’t mind, even though …?’

  ‘Listen to me, this is important. When she left Picratt’s at four in the morning, Arlette went to the station on Rue de La Rochefoucauld. According to the sergeant who heard her out, she was very worked up by then and staggering a bit. She told him about two men who had sat at table four when she was at six with you, and whose conversation she’d partly overheard.’

  ‘Why did she say that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. When we know, we’ll probably have got somewhere. There’s more. The two men were talking about some countess whom one of them was planning to murder. When they left, according to Arlette, she got a very clear sight, from behind, of a middle-aged man, on the short side, with broad shoulders and grey hair. And, while they were talking, she said she overheard the first name Oscar, which seemed to refer to him.’

  ‘But I think I would have heard …’

  ‘I saw Fred and his wife. They also say that table four was empty all night and that no one of that description came in to Picratt’s. So, Arlette knew something. She didn’t want to, or wasn’t able to, admit how she had found it out. She was drunk, you told me. She probably thought we wouldn’t check where the customers were sitting. Do you follow me?’

  ‘Yes. How could she come up with a name? Why?’

  ‘Exactly. She wasn’t asked. There was no need. If she did it, she must have had a reason. And that reason can only have been to give us a lead. Another thing: at the station, she was emphatic, but once she got here, after she’d had time to sleep off her champagne, she wa
s much more reticent, and Lucas had the feeling she’d happily have retracted everything she’d said. Well, we know now that it wasn’t just idle fancy.’

  ‘I’m certain it wasn’t.’

  ‘She went home, and someone who was waiting for her, hidden in the wardrobe in her bedroom, strangled her. So it was someone who knew her very well, who was a regular visitor to her apartment and probably had a key.’

  ‘And the countess?’

  ‘No news so far. Either she hasn’t been killed or the body hasn’t been found, which is possible. She never talked to you about a countess?’

  ‘Never.’

  Lapointe sat staring at the desk for a long while, then asked in a different voice:

  ‘Do you think she suffered very much?’

  ‘Not for long. It was done by someone very strong, and she didn’t even struggle.’

  ‘Is she still there?’

  ‘They’ve just taken her to the Forensic Institute.’

  ‘Do I have permission to go and see her?’

  ‘After you’ve had something to eat.’

  ‘Then what should I do?’

  ‘Go to her place, Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. Ask Janvier for the key. We’ve already examined the flat, but an insignificant detail may mean something to you, seeing as you knew her.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said fervently, convinced Maigret was giving him this job just to make him happy.

  Maigret was careful not to draw his attention to the photographs under a file on his desk, their edges poking out.

  An orderly came to tell him that five or six reporters were waiting in the corridor, demanding information. He had them brought in, told them only part of the story, but gave each of them one of the photographs of Arlette in her black silk dress.

  ‘Can you also say,’ he instructed them, ‘that we would be grateful to a certain Jeanne Leleu, who will be living under another name at present, if she would kindly make herself known to us. She is guaranteed absolute discretion, and we have no desire to complicate her existence.’

  *

  He ate lunch late, at home, then still had time to go back to Quai des Orfèvres and read the Alfonsi file. Paris was as ghostly in the drizzly, dirty rain as it had been earlier, and people seemed to be scurrying about the streets, as if they thought they might be able to escape from the aquarium.