Maigret at Picratt's

by Georges Simenon

  ‘I understand,’ Maigret said gravely, taking a little drag on his pipe.

  ‘The name isn’t the same either, obviously. But it’s normal, when people lead that life, for them to change their name. I was taken aback, though, to find out that she took the name Arlette and that she had an identity card in the name of Jeanne Leleu. The strangest thing is that I knew the Leleus …’

  He waited patiently, watching the snow fall.

  ‘In any case, I showed the photograph to three different people, reliable people who knew Anne-Marie well, and all three were positive. It’s definitely her, my brother and sister-in-law’s daughter.’

  ‘Is your brother still alive?’

  ‘He died when the child was only two. He was killed in a train accident which you may remember, the famous Rouen disaster. I’d told him …’

  ‘Your sister-in-law lives in Lisieux?’

  ‘She’s never set foot out of the area. But, as I have said, we don’t see each other. It would take too long to explain. There are people in life, aren’t there, who you just can’t get along with. Say no more!’

  ‘Say no more!’ he repeated.

  Then he asked:

  ‘Incidentally, what’s your brother’s name?’

  ‘Trochain. Gaston Trochain. We are a large family, probably the largest in Lisieux, and one of the oldest. I don’t know if you know the area?’

  ‘No, madame. I have only passed through.’

  ‘Then in that case you’ve seen the statue of General Trochain on the square. He’s our great-grandfather. And if you take the Caen road, the chateau you see on the right, with a slate-tiled roof, used to belong to the family. It’s not ours any more. It was bought up after the 1914 war by some nouveaux riches. My brother still had a good job, though.’

  ‘Is it indiscreet to ask what he did?’

  ‘He was an inspector in the Forestry Commission. As for my sister-in-law, she’s the daughter of an ironmonger who made a little money, so she inherited a dozen houses and two farms. When my brother was alive, we saw her for his sake. But as soon as she became a widow, everyone realized she was out of place, and now she is more or less always on her own in her big house.’

  ‘You think she’s read the article too?’

  ‘Without a doubt. The photo was on the front page of the local paper that everyone gets.’

  ‘Doesn’t it surprise you that there hasn’t been any word from her?’

  ‘No, inspector. And I’m pretty sure there won’t be. She is too proud for that. I’d even bet that if she were shown the body she’d swear it wasn’t her daughter. I know she hasn’t heard from her in four years. No one in Lisieux has. And it’s not her daughter she’s worried about, it’s what people think of her.’

  ‘Do you know under what circumstances the young girl came to leave her mother’s house?’

  ‘I tell you, no one could live with that woman. But there was something else. I don’t know who the girl took after. It certainly wasn’t my brother, everyone will tell you that. Be that as it may, when she was fifteen, she was expelled from her convent. After that, if I had to go out in the evening, I wouldn’t dare look in a darkened doorway in case I saw her in there with a man. A married man, even. My sister-in-law thought she’d get the better of her by locking her in, which has never been a good approach, and that only made her wilder. In town they talk about how she once climbed out of the window without her shoes and was seen tramping the streets barefoot.’

  ‘Does she have any distinctive features which would make you absolutely certain of recognizing her?’

  ‘Yes, inspector.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have unfortunately not had children. My husband has never been very strong and he has been ill for years. When my niece was little, we hadn’t fallen out yet, her mother and I. As the sister-in-law, I often looked after the baby of the family and I remember that she had a birthmark under her left heel, a little wine-coloured stain that never went.’

  Maigret picked up the telephone and called the Forensic Institute.

  ‘Hello, Police Judiciaire here. Will you examine the left foot of the young woman who was brought in yesterday? … Yes … I’ll stay on the line … Tell me anything you notice in particular …’

  She waited with absolute self-assurance, like a woman who has never been prone to self-doubt, sitting very upright in her chair, both hands propped on the silver clasp of her bag. You could imagine her sitting like that in church, listening to a sermon with the same hard, closed expression.

  ‘Hello? Yes … That’s all … Thank you … You’re most likely going to have a visit from someone who will identify the body …’

  He turned towards the woman from Lisieux.

  ‘I assume you won’t find that frightening?’

  ‘It’s my duty,’ she answered.

  He couldn’t face keeping poor Lognon waiting any longer, let alone accompany his visitor to the morgue. He scanned the next-door office for someone.

  ‘You free, Lucas?’

  ‘I’ve just finished my report on the Javel business.’

  ‘Could you take this lady to the morgue?’

  She was taller than the sergeant and very wiry, and as she walked ahead of him down the corridor, it looked slightly as if she were leading him on a leash.

  6.

  When Lognon came in, pushing in front of him his prisoner, whose hair was so long that it bunched in a roll at the nape of his neck, Maigret noticed that the latter was carrying a heavy, brown canvas case, held together with string, which was making him walk lopsided.

  Maigret opened a door and ushered the young man into the inspectors’ office.

  ‘See what’s in there,’ he told his men, pointing at the suitcase.

  Then, as he was walking away, he had another thought.

  ‘Get him to take down his trousers to see if he injects.’

  Alone with Lognon, he observed the hard-done-by inspector benignly. He didn’t begrudge him his ill-humour, knowing that his wife didn’t help make his life a pleasant experience. He wasn’t the only one of his colleagues who was perfectly willing to be agreeable to Lognon. But it was too much for them. The moment they saw his lugubrious face, always looking as if he sensed some impending doom, they couldn’t help shrugging their shoulders or smiling.

  At heart, Maigret suspected he enjoyed grumbling about his misfortune and had turned it into his personal vice, which he lovingly nurtured the way some old men nurture their chronic bronchitis to earn people’s pity.

  ‘Well, my friend?’

  ‘Well, here we are.’

  Which meant that Lognon was ready to answer any questions, since he was merely a low-ranking police officer, but that he thought it outrageous that his good self, to whom the investigation would have fallen if the Police Judiciaire hadn’t existed, who knew his neighbourhood like the back of his hand and who hadn’t allowed himself a minute’s rest since the previous evening, should now have to account for himself.

  The downturn of his mouth eloquently communicated:

  ‘I know what’s going to happen. It’s always the way. You’re going to worm everything I know out of me, and tomorrow – or soon, at any rate – the newspapers will announce that Detective Chief Inspector Maigret has solved the problem. Yet again they’ll go on about his intuition, his methods.’

  At heart, Lognon didn’t believe a word of it, which probably explained his attitude. The fact that Maigret was a detective chief inspector, that other men in the building were in the special squad rather than kicking their heels outside a local police station, was simply because they had been lucky, or had friends in the right places, or knew how to sell themselves.

  As far as he was concerned, no one had more to offer than Lognon.

  ‘Where did you dig him up?’

  ‘Gare du Nord.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning, at six thirty. It was still dark.’

  ‘You know his name?’

 
‘I’ve known it for ages. This is the eighth time I’ve arrested him. We generally use his first name, Philippe. He’s called Philippe Montemart, and his father is a professor at Nancy University.’

  It was surprising hearing Lognon vouchsafing this much information in one go. His shoes were muddy and old and must have let in water; his trouser bottoms were soaked up to the knee; his eyes were tired and red-rimmed.

  ‘You knew it was him the moment the concierge mentioned a young man with long hair?’

  ‘I know this neighbourhood.’

  Meaning, in a word, that Maigret and his men had no business getting involved.

  ‘You went to his place? Where does he live?’

  ‘In what used to be a maid’s room in a building on Boulevard Rochechouart. He wasn’t there.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘Six o’clock, yesterday evening.’

  ‘Had he taken his suitcase?’

  ‘Not at that point.’

  Lognon was the most tenacious bloodhound imaginable, you had to give him that. He had set off on a lead, with no way of knowing if it was the right one, and he had pursued it without faltering.

  ‘You were looking for him from six o’clock yesterday evening until this morning?’

  ‘I know the places he goes. He needed money to leave town and was doing the rounds looking for someone to scrounge off. It was only when he had got the money that he went and fetched his suitcase.’

  ‘How did you know he was at the Gare du Nord?’

  ‘A girl saw him take the first bus from Square d’Anvers. I found him in the waiting room.’

  ‘And what have you been doing with him since seven this morning?’

  ‘I took him to the station to question him.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He won’t say anything or doesn’t know anything.’

  It was strange. Maigret sensed the inspector was in a hurry to be off, and it probably wasn’t because he wanted to go to bed.

  ‘I suppose I’m leaving him with you?’

  ‘Have you written your report?’

  ‘I’ll give it to my chief inspector this evening.’

  ‘Did Philippe supply the countess with drugs?’

  ‘Unless she gave them to him. At any rate, they were often seen together.’

  ‘And had been for a long time?’

  ‘A few months. If you don’t need me any more …’

  He definitely had a plan. Either Philippe had told him something that had set him thinking or else, while he was searching the previous night, he had gleaned the inkling of a lead and he was in a hurry to pursue it before anyone else could.

  Maigret was familiar with the neighbourhood too and he could imagine the sort of night Philippe and the inspector had had. To drum up money, the young man would have had to try all his contacts and must have scoured the world of drug addicts. No doubt he had worked his way through all the girls touting for business outside sleazy hotels, the café waiters, the nightclub errand boys. Then, when the streets emptied out, he would have knocked at the door of a dump where other outcasts of his kind lived, just as pathetic and penniless as himself.

  Had he at least got some drugs for himself? If not, he was going to keel over at any moment.

  ‘Can I go?’

  ‘Thank you. You’ve done good work.’

  ‘I’m not saying he killed the old woman.’

  ‘I’m not either.’

  ‘Are you going to detain him?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  Lognon left, and Maigret opened the door to the inspectors’ room. The suitcase lay open on the floor. Philippe, whose face was the colour and consistency of melted wax, lifted his arm every time someone moved, as if he were afraid of being hit.

  No one in the room showed a flicker of sympathy, and the same expression of disgust could be read on every face.

  The suitcase only contained shabby clothes, a spare pair of socks, some bottles of medicine – Maigret smelled them to check it wasn’t heroin – and a number of notebooks.

  He leafed through them. They were poems, or, more exactly, incoherent phrases generated by an addict’s ravings.

  ‘Come here!’ he said.

  Philippe inched past him like someone who expects a kick up the backside. It must have been a familiar occurrence. Even in Montmartre there are people who can’t see someone of his sort without laying into him.

  Maigret sat down without offering him a seat, and the young man remained standing, sniffing constantly, his nose dry, his nostrils twitching infuriatingly.

  ‘The countess was your mistress?’

  ‘She was my protector.’

  He said these words in the voice and accent of a homosexual.

  ‘Meaning you didn’t sleep with her?’

  ‘She took an interest in my writing.’

  ‘And gave you money?’

  ‘She helped me live.’

  ‘Did she give you much?’

  ‘She wasn’t rich.’

  For evidence, one only had to look at his well-cut but threadbare suit, a blue double-breasted affair. His shoes must have been a present as well, because they were patent leather and would have gone better with a dinner jacket than the dirty raincoat he had on.

  ‘Why did you try to run away to Belgium?’

  He didn’t answer immediately, glancing at the neighbouring office’s door as if he were afraid that Maigret was going to call in two brawny inspectors to give him a thrashing. Perhaps that had happened when he had been arrested before.

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t understand why I’ve been arrested.’

  ‘Do you like men?’

  Deep down, like all fairies, he was proud of it, and an involuntary smile formed on his unnaturally red lips. Maybe getting told off by real men turned him on?

  ‘You’d rather not answer?’

  ‘I have men friends.’

  ‘But you also have women friends?’

  ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘If I understand correctly, the men friends are for pleasure and the old ladies are for your daily bread?’

  ‘They like my company.’

  ‘Do you know many of them?’

  ‘Three or four.’

  ‘Are they all your protectors?’

  It took considerable self-control for him to be able to speak about these things in an ordinary voice, to treat the youngster as a man like himself.

  ‘They help me sometimes.’

  ‘Do they all use drugs?’

  When he turned his head away without replying, Maigret lost his temper. He didn’t get to his feet, didn’t grab him by the filthy collar of his raincoat and shake him, but his voice became quiet, his delivery staccato.

  ‘Listen! I haven’t got much patience today, and I’m not called Lognon. Either you start talking this minute or I’m going to stick you behind bars for a good long stretch. But not before I let my inspectors have it out with you.’

  ‘You mean they’ll hit me?’

  ‘They’ll do whatever they feel like doing.’

  ‘They’ve no right to do that.’

  ‘And you’ve no right to ruin the view. Now, try to answer my questions. How long have you known the countess?’

  ‘About six months.’

  ‘Where did you meet her?’

  ‘In a little bar on Rue Victor-Massé, practically opposite her apartment.’

  ‘You realized straight away that she shot up?’

  ‘It was easy to tell.’

  ‘Did you turn on the charm?’

  ‘I asked her to give me a little.’

  ‘She had some?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A lot?’

  ‘She almost never ran out.’

  ‘Do you know how she got it?’

  ‘She didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Answer the question. Do you know?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘From a doctor.’

&nb
sp; ‘A doctor who takes it too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doctor Bloch?’

  ‘I don’t know his name.’

  ‘You’re lying. Did you go and see him?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So he’d give me some.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘Because you threatened to talk?’

  ‘I was desperate. I hadn’t had any for three days. He gave me an injection, just one.’

  ‘Where did you meet up with the countess?’

  ‘In the bar and at her apartment.’

  ‘Why did she give you morphine and money?’

  ‘Because she took an interest in me.’

  ‘I’ve told you, you’d better answer my questions.’

  ‘She felt lonely.’

  ‘Didn’t she know anyone?’

  ‘She was always on her own.’

  ‘Did you make love?’

  ‘I tried to please her.’

  ‘At her apartment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you both drank red wine?’

  ‘It made me ill.’

  ‘And then you’d fall asleep on her bed. Did you sometimes spend the night?’

  ‘I sometimes stayed a couple of days.’

  ‘Without opening the curtains, I’m sure. Without knowing when it was day and when it was night. Is that right?’

  Then he must have roamed the streets like a sleepwalker, in a world he no longer belonged to, looking for someone else with drugs.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-eight.’

  ‘When did you start?’

  ‘Three or four years ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you still in touch with your parents?’

  ‘My father wished me in hell a long time ago.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She secretly sends me a postal order every so often.’

  ‘Tell me about the countess.’

  ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Say what you know.’

  ‘She used to be very rich. She was married to a man she didn’t love, an old man who wouldn’t let her alone for a minute and had her followed by a private detective.’