Maigret staked his all, but he was sure of himself! Things couldn’t have happened any other way.
‘I’m waiting to hear what the three mistakes were!’ said Cageot after a moment, reaching for the box of sugared almonds.
And Maigret imagined the hotel in Rue Lepic, whose residents were mainly musicians, gigolos and prostitutes.
‘In the Audiat case, the mistake is that someone put the poison in the jug!’
Cageot was baffled, sucked another sugared almond, and there was a faintly sweet smell in the air, a hint of vanilla.
‘With Barnabé,’ continued Maigret pouring himself a drink, ‘you took at least two people with you: Pepito and the driver, probably Eugène. And it was Pepito who subsequently threatened to squeal.
‘Are you with me? Result: the need to eliminate Pepito. You were only dealing with the shooting. But you added the extra touch of going to fetch Audiat, whose job was to bump into the inspector. What automatically happens? Eugène, Louis, the owner of the Tabac Fontaine, a belote player called Colin and Audiat are now in the know. It is Audiat who loses his nerve. And so you have to get rid of him!
‘But, yesterday afternoon, you didn’t go to Rue Lepic yourself. You must have used a resident at the hotel whom you contacted by telephone. Another accomplice! A man who might talk! Are you with me now?’
Cageot was still ruminating. The sun reached the nickel-plated telephone receiver. It was late. A crowd was swelling around the little barrows and the clamour from the street could be heard in the apartment despite the closed windows.
‘You’re good, that’s clear. But then, why do you keep lumbering yourself with useless accomplices who are likely to give you away? You could have easily bumped off Barnabé at any time, he wasn’t suspicious of you. You didn’t need Audiat in the Pepito business. And yesterday, when you weren’t under surveillance, you could have gone to Rue Lepic yourself. In these hotels, where there’s no doorman, anyone can just walk straight in.’
Occasionally footsteps could be heard on the stairs, and Maigret had to force himself to appear calm and carry on talking as if nothing were amiss.
‘Right now, there are five people at least who can have you put away. Now, five people have never managed to keep a secret like that for long.’
‘I didn’t stab Barnabé,’ said Cageot slowly. He was gloomier than ever.
Maigret jumped at the opportunity and stated confidently:
‘I know!’
Cageot looked at him in surprise and narrowed his eyes.
‘A stabbing is more up the street of an Italian, like Pepito.’
He needed to make one more tiny effort, but just then the cleaning woman opened the door and Maigret thought his edifice was going to collapse.
‘I’m off to the market,’ she announced. ‘What vegetables shall I get?’
‘Whatever you like.’
‘Can you give me some money?’
Cageot took two ten-franc coins from a sturdy, well-worn purse with a metal clasp, a real miser’s purse. The wine bottle on the table was empty and he held it out to Marthe.
‘Here! You can get the deposit back on this. You have the receipt.’
His mind was elsewhere, however. Marthe left without shutting the door, but she did close the kitchen door behind her and water could be heard boiling on the stove.
Maigret had been watching Cageot’s every move, and forgotten about the telephone and the typists lying in wait on the other end of the line. He had a sudden intuition, he couldn’t have said exactly when. He had talked a lot, without thinking too hard about what he was saying, and now he was within a hair’s breadth of the truth.
Added to which were the sugared almonds in the comfit box, the purse and even the word ‘vegetable’.
‘I bet you’re on a diet.’
‘It’s been twenty years.’
Cageot was no longer talking about throwing his visitor out. It even seemed as if he needed him. Seeing Maigret’s empty glass, he said:
‘Marthe will bring some more wine. There’s never more than one bottle in the house.’
‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’
Because it fitted in with all the rest, of course! Because now, for Maigret, Cageot had stopped being an adversary and had become a man. And he knew this man better with each second. He felt him live, breathe, think, fear and hope. He could hear the irritating rattle of the sugared almond against his teeth.
The decor came to life too – the desk, the furniture, the paintings, as cloying as jam.
‘Do you know what I think, Cageot?’
These were not just hollow words, but the culmination of a long chain of thought.
‘I’m asking myself if you really did kill Pepito. Right now, I’m almost certain you didn’t.’
His tone had changed. Maigret was fired up, leaning forwards to get a closer look at Cageot.
‘I’m going to tell you straight away why I think that. If you had been capable of shooting Pepito yourself, you wouldn’t have needed anyone to kill Barnabé and Audiat. The truth is that you’re afraid.’
Cageot’s lips were dry. Even so he attempted an ironic smile.
‘Just you dare to tell me that you have slaughtered a chicken or a rabbit! Dare to tell me that you are capable of seeing blood flow from a wound!’
Maigret no longer had any doubts. He had understood. He charged ahead.
‘Let’s get this straight. You are afraid to kill with your own hands, but you have no compunction about doing away with a person! On the contrary! You are afraid of killing, afraid of dying. But that makes you all the more determined to order murders. Isn’t that true, Cageot?’
Maigret’s voice was devoid of hatred, devoid of pity. He studied Cageot with the fascination with which he studied human beings in general. And this man was terribly human in his eyes. Nothing had been left to chance, not even his first job as a solicitor’s clerk.
Cageot was and always had been completely withdrawn. All alone, his eyes closed, he must dream up brilliant schemes, schemes of all kinds, financial, criminal and erotic.
Had he ever been seen with women? Of course not! Women were not capable of enacting his wild fantasies!
Cageot retreated into himself, into a lair filled with his thoughts, his dreams, his smell.
And when he looked out of his windows at the street below bathed in sunlight, where people teemed around the market stalls and packed buses rumbled past, what he was inclined to do was not to mingle with the living mass of humanity outside, but to use it as inspiration for his cunning schemes.
‘You are a coward, Cageot!’ thundered Maigret. ‘A coward like all those who live only by their brains. You sell women, cocaine, and God only knows what else – for I believe you are capable of anything. But at the same time you are a police informer!’
Cageot did not take his grey eyes off Maigret, who was unstoppable.
‘You had Barnabé killed by Pepito. And I’m going to tell you who you had kill Pepito. In your gang, there is a good-looking young man, who has everything going for him – women, money and success. He’s happy-go-lucky and completely devoid of a conscience.
‘Just you dare to tell me that the night of Pepito’s murder you weren’t at the Tabac Fontaine! There was the owner, then that brothel-owner Colin, who is even more of a coward than you, then Audiat, the fellow from Marseille and lastly Eugène.
‘It was Eugène whom you sent to the Floria. Then, when he came back, having done the job, and told you there had been someone inside the club, you brought Audiat in.’
‘And then what?’ said Cageot. ‘What use is all this to you?’
He gripped the arms of his chair with both hands as if he wanted to get up. He thrust his head slightly forwards, in a movement of defiance.
‘What use is it to me? To prove to you that I’ll get you, precisely because you are a coward and you have surrounded yourself with too many people.’
‘I swear you won’t eve
r get me.’
He had a mirthless smile. His pupils had contracted. He added slowly:
‘The police have never been very clever! Earlier you mentioned poisoning. Seeing as you were once in the police, you can probably tell me how many poisonings they expose every year in Paris?’
Maigret did not have time to reply.
‘Every year! You hear me? You can’t be naive enough to believe that out of a population of four million, there aren’t a few who succumb to an overdose of arsenic or strychnine?’
He got to his feet at last. Maigret had been expecting him to do this for some time. It was the release after too long an effort, and the release inevitably expressed itself in words.
‘I could have killed you today. I thought about it. All I needed to do was poison your wine. You’ll note that the bottle is already gone from the house. All I’d need to do is rinse your glass. You’d leave here and you’d go and die somewhere—’
Maigret had a doubt, but it lasted only a fraction of a second.
‘You are right. I didn’t kill Barnabé. I didn’t kill Pepito. I didn’t even kill that idiot Audiat!’
Cageot, comfit box in hand, spoke softly and continuously. He was a ridiculous sight with his dressing gown that was too short and his unkempt hair giving him a strange halo. Had it not been for the telephone, Maigret would have opened a window to escape this oppressive atmosphere of a reclusive existence.
‘What I say to you is of no consequence, since you are not a sworn police officer and there are no witnesses.’
As if overcome by doubt, he glanced at the corridor and even opened the door to his bedroom for a moment.
‘The thing you have not understood, you see, is that they won’t betray me, even if they want to, because legally they are guiltier than I am! Eugène has killed. It’s Louis who supplied the gun and the key to the Floria. And do you know what might happen if Eugène tried to be clever? Little Monsieur Colin, as you call him, that half-deaf little runt with a stutter, has instructions to slip something in his glass one night while they’re playing belote. I promise you, in this game, it’s not as necessary as you might think to be capable of slitting a chicken’s throat.’
Maigret had gone over to the desk to pick up his hat and his matches. His knees were trembling slightly. It was over. He had achieved his goal. All he had to do was to get out. The inspector waiting outside in the street had a summons in his pocket. At Quai des Orfèvres they were waiting for news and were probably laying bets on the outcome.
Maigret had been there for two hours. Eugène, in silk pyjamas, was perhaps having a late breakfast with Fernande. And where on earth might Philippe’s dear mother be?
There were footsteps on the stairs, followed by a violent knocking on the apartment door. Cageot looked Maigret in the eyes, then gazed at his revolver, which was still lying on the desk.
While he went to open the door, Maigret put his hand on his gun pocket and stood stock-still in the middle of the room.
‘What’s going on?’ came Eugène’s voice from the hall.
The two men were instantly at the door to the office. There were more footsteps behind them, those of Fernande, who stared at Maigret in surprise.
‘What the—?’ repeated Eugène.
But already a car was pulling up outside with a squeal of brakes.
Eugène ran to a window.
‘I knew it!’ he groaned.
The police, who had been watching Fernande’s place and had followed the couple, jumped out on to the pavement.
Cageot didn’t budge. His revolver in his hand, he was thinking.
‘Why have you come here?’
He was addressing Eugène, who was talking at the same time.
‘I telephoned four times and—’
Maigret had inched backwards so as to have his back to the wall.
At that, Cageot glanced at the telephone. Just then a shot rang out, the room was filled with the smell of burnt gunpowder and a bluish cloud hung in the sunlight.
Maigret had fired. The bullet had hit Cageot’s hand, causing him to drop the revolver.
‘Don’t move!’ said Maigret, who was still pointing his gun.
Cageot stood rooted to the spot. In his mouth he still had a sugared almond, which made his left cheek bulge. He did not dare move a muscle.
There were footsteps on the stairs.
‘Go and open the door, Fernande,’ commanded Maigret.
She sought Eugène with her eyes to know whether she should obey, but her lover was staring stubbornly at the floor. So she walked resignedly across the hall, undid the chain and unlocked the door.
Blood was dripping from Cageot’s hand, plopping on to the rug, where a brownish stain was spreading.
Suddenly, before Maigret could do anything, Eugène made a dash for one of the windows, flung it open, breaking a pane, and jumped out.
Screams rose up from the street. Eugène had landed on the roof of a stationary car, leaped to the ground and started running in the direction of Rue des Dames.
At that moment, two inspectors appeared in the doorway.
‘What’s going on?’ they asked Maigret.
‘Nothing. You are going to arrest Cageot, against whom there is a summons. Have you got back-up downstairs?’
‘No.’
Fernande had no idea what was happening. She stood gazing at the open window in a stupor.
‘Then he’ll run for a long time!’
As he spoke, Maigret picked up the round of wood and slipped it into his pocket. He had the feeling that something was afoot with Cageot, but it wasn’t serious. Cageot had crumpled to the floor and rolled on the rug, where he lay inert.
He had fainted, probably at the sight of his blood splashing on to the rug, drop by drop.
‘Wait till he comes round. Call a doctor if you must. The telephone is working now.’
Maigret shoved Fernande on to the landing and made her go down the stairs ahead of him. A crowd had gathered in front of the building. A beat sergeant was trying to fight his way through it.
Maigret elbowed his way out of the crush and he and Fernande found themselves outside the charcuterie on the corner of the street.
‘The love of your life?’ he asked.
Then he noticed that she was wearing a new fur coat. He felt it.
‘Did he give it to you?’
‘Yes, this morning.’
‘By the way, do you know that he’s the one who killed Pepito?’
‘Oh!’
She hadn’t batted an eyelid. He smiled.
‘Did he tell you?’
She merely fluttered her eyelashes.
‘When?’
‘This morning.’
And she added, suddenly solemn, like a woman in love who believes it’s the real thing:
‘You won’t get him!’
And she was right. A month later, she went to join Eugène in Istanbul, where he had opened a nightclub on the famous Grand Rue de Pera.
As for Cageot, he was a book-keeper in prison.
Madame Lauer wrote to her sister:
I’m sending you by express delivery six plum tree saplings like the ones we have in the garden at La Tourelle, as you requested. I think they’ll take very well in the Loire. But you should tell your husband that in my view he doesn’t prune his fruit trees properly, he should take off more branches.
Philippe is much better since he’s been back home. He’s a good boy who barely ever goes out and loves doing crosswords in the evening. But in the last few days, I’ve seen him hanging around the Scheffers’ house (the owners of the gasworks) and I think there are wedding bells in the air.
Tell your husband too that last night they put on the play that we saw together at the Palais-Royal. But it didn’t go down as well as it did in Paris …
Maigret came in wearing his waders and holding three pike at arm’s length.
‘But we’re not going to eat those, are we?’ said his wife.
‘Of c
ourse not!’
He said that in such an odd tone of voice that she raised her head to look at him. But no! He was already going into the shed to put away his fishing rods and take off his boots.
‘If we had to eat everything we killed!’
The words formed in his mind of their own accord at the same time as a ridiculous image, that of an ashen, perplexed Cageot confronted with the bodies of Pepito and Audiat. It did not even bring a smile to his face.
‘What soup have you made?’ he shouted, sitting down on a crate.
‘Tomato.’
‘Good!’
And the rubber boots fell to the beaten earth floor one after the other as he heaved a contented sigh.
1.
The pipe that Detective Chief Inspector Maigret lit on coming out of his door in the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir was even more delicious than usual. The first fog of the season was as pleasant a surprise as the first snow for children, especially when it was not that nasty yellowish fog you see on certain winter days, but a misty, milky vapour with halos of light in it. The air was fresh. The ends of your fingers and your nose tingled on a day like this, and the soles of your shoes clicked smartly on the road.
Hands in the pockets of his large velvet-collared overcoat, famous at Quai des Orfèvres and still smelling slightly of mothballs, his bowler hat well down on his head, Maigret made his way to the Police Judiciaire on foot, at his leisure, and was amused when a girl suddenly shot out of the fog at a run and collided with his dark, solid form.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir.’
And she set off just as fast to catch her bus or Métro train.
It seemed as if all of Paris was enjoying the fog that morning, just like Inspector Maigret, and only the tugboats on the Seine hoarsely announced their uneasiness.
A memory was to stick in his mind for no good reason: he had just crossed Place de la Bastille on his way to Boulevard Henri-IV. He was passing a little bistro. The door opened, because it was the first time this season that the chill in the air had made the cafés close their doors. In passing, Maigret walked through a gust of aromatic air that was, to him, the quintessence of the Parisian dawn: the smell of good white coffee, hot croissants and just a touch of rum. He guessed that behind the steamed-up windows ten, fifteen or twenty customers were sitting at the metal counter, enjoying their first meal of the day before hurrying off to work.
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