Maigret's Doubts

by Georges Simenon

  Maigret didn’t need to knock. They had heard his footsteps, and it was Lapointe who opened the door to him from inside, a Lapointe who was pale with exhaustion, and also because of what he had just discovered. He didn’t say a word, since the spectacle displayed to his chief spoke for itself.

  The sofa in the drawing-room-workshop converted into a bed, and it was Xavier Marton who was lying on it. The blankets were untidy, the pillow was at an angle, and on the floor, on the beige jute mat, halfway between the bed and the spiral staircase that led to the first floor, the body of the train-set lover lay on his belly, in his pyjamas, face down on the floor.

  The red stripes of his pyjamas further emphasized his contorted pose. It looked as if he had collapsed while walking on all fours, and he was completely twisted, his right arm stretched out, his fists clenched, as if in one final effort he had tried to reach for the revolver which also lay on the ground, about twenty centimetres from his fingers.

  Maigret didn’t ask if he was dead. It was obvious. Three people studied him in silence, because the two women were there, almost as motionless as the corpse, they too in nightwear, with dressing gowns over their nightdresses, bare feet in slippers. Some of Jenny’s hair, darker than her sister’s, had fallen over her face and hid one of her eyes.

  Mechanically, and not thinking about what he was saying, Maigret murmured to Lapointe:

  ‘You haven’t touched anything?’

  Lapointe shook his head. There were rings under his eyes, and his beard, like the dead man’s and Maigret’s, had grown during the night.

  ‘Alert the local station. Phone Criminal Records to send photographers and experts at once. And call Doctor Paul …’

  ‘And the prosecutor’s office?’

  ‘There will be time for that later.’

  In that part of the Palais de Justice, life didn’t begin as early as it did at Quai des Orfèvres, and Maigret didn’t want to have those gentlemen under his feet too soon.

  He looked at the two women out of the corner of his eye. It hadn’t occurred to either of them to sit down. Leaning against the wall, near the table with the train set, the sister-in-law, with a rolled-up handkerchief in her hand, dabbed her red eyes from time to time and sniffed as if she had a head cold. She had big, dark, gentle, fearful eyes, like those of forest animals, roe deer, for example, and she gave off a warm smell of bed.

  Colder, or more composed, Gisèle Marton looked at Maigret, and she clenched her hands involuntarily from time to time.

  Lapointe had gone outside and walked across the courtyard. He must have been telephoning from the concierge’s lodge. The two women probably expected Maigret to question them. Perhaps he had thought for a moment about doing so but in the end he merely said under his breath:

  ‘Go and get dressed.’

  They were disconcerted by that, Jenny even more than Gisèle. She opened her mouth to speak, said nothing and then decided, after giving her sister a harsh and hateful look, to go up the stairs first; as she climbed, Maigret could see her naked, white thighs.

  ‘You too …’

  In a slightly husky voice, Gisèle said:

  ‘I know.’

  She seemed to be waiting for her sister to close the door of her room before going upstairs.

  Maigret stayed on his own with Marton’s corpse for only a few moments and barely had time to look around and take stock of the room. Nevertheless, it was photographed in his mind, down to the slightest details, and he knew he would find them in his memory when he needed them.

  He heard a car pull up, a squeak of brakes, the slamming of a door. Then there were footsteps in the courtyard, and, as Lapointe had done for him, he opened the door.

  He knew Boisset, the inspector of the fourteenth arrondissement, who was accompanied by a uniformed officer and a chubby little man carrying a doctor’s bag.

  ‘Come in, all three of you … I think, doctor, that all you have to do is record the death … Doctor Paul will be here shortly …’

  Boisset looked at him quizzically.

  ‘A case I’ve been looking into for two days,’ Maigret murmured. ‘I’ll explain later … For now, there’s nothing to be done.’

  They heard footsteps above their heads, a tap being turned on, a toilet being flushed.

  As Boisset looked up at the ceiling in surprise, Maigret went on:

  ‘The wife and the sister-in-law …’

  He felt as weary as if it was he, and not Lapointe, who had spent the night outside, in the cold and rain. Lapointe would be back shortly. The doctor, after kneeling down for a moment, got back to his feet. He had pointed a torch at the dead man’s staring eyes, then brought his face close to the man’s lips and sniffed.

  ‘At first sight, it looks like a poisoning.’

  ‘It is.’

  Lapointe gestured to Maigret to say that he had fulfilled his mission. Whispering was heard in the courtyard. Several people had approached the shutters, which were still closed.

  Maigret said to the uniformed officer:

  ‘You should go outside and disperse any people who have gathered.’

  The doctor asked:

  ‘Do you still need me?’

  ‘No. Later we’ll give you the information you need on the man’s identity for the death certificate.’

  ‘Goodbye, gentlemen! Boisset knows where to find me …’

  Gisèle Marton came downstairs first, and Maigret noticed immediately that she was wearing her suit and had her fur coat over her arm. She was also holding a handbag, which suggested that she expected to be led away. She had taken the time to put on her make-up, and discreetly. The expression on her face was grave, thoughtful, still with a hint of surprise.

  When Jenny appeared in turn, she was wearing a black dress. Noticing her sister’s outfit, she asked, after moistening her lips:

  ‘Will I need a coat?’

  Maigret blinked. The one who was observing him most intensely was Lapointe, who had rarely been so impressed by his attitude. He felt that this was no ordinary investigation, and that the chief had no intention of proceeding in a normal fashion, but he hadn’t the faintest idea what he planned to do.

  His nerves were so tense that it was a relief to see Boisset light a cigarette. He held out his pack to Lapointe, who declined, then, turning to Gisèle, who was waiting as if on a station platform, averting her eyes from the dead man, he said:

  ‘Do you smoke?’

  She took one. He brought the flame of his lighter closer, and she inhaled nervously.

  ‘Do you have a police car by the door?’ Maigret asked the local inspector.

  ‘I kept it just in case.’

  ‘Can I use it?’

  He was still looking around him, as if to check that he hadn’t forgotten a single detail. He was about to give the two women the sign that they were leaving when he changed his mind.

  ‘Just a moment …’

  And he in turn went upstairs, to the first floor, where the lights were still lit. There were only two bedrooms, a bathroom and a box room piled high with suitcases, old trunks, a tailor’s mannequin and old paraffin lamps on the floor along with some dusty books.

  He went into the first bedroom, the larger of the two. It contained a double bed, and the smell told him that he was in Madame Marton’s room. The wardrobe confirmed as much, because he found in it clothes of the kind he had seen her wearing: simple, elegant, even luxurious. On a board just above the floor a dozen pairs of shoes were lined up.

  The bed was unmade, like the one downstairs. The nightdress had been thrown carelessly on it, along with the salmon-pink dressing gown. On the dressing table there were pots of cream, some little bottles, a silver manicure set and pins in a Chinese bowl.

  In another wardrobe there were men’s clothes: only two suits, a sports jacket, two pairs of shoes and some espadrilles. There mustn’t have been a wardrobe downstairs, and Marton still kept his belongings in the marital bedroom.

  He looked in the chests of
drawers, pushed open a door and found himself in the bathroom. On the glass tray he saw three tooth mugs, a brush in each, which indicated that each of them came to the room in turn. Some lipstick on crumpled napkins, one of which had been thrown on the floor. And on the porcelain toilet bowl and the tiles surrounding it, there were little dried stains, as if someone had been vomiting during the night.

  The other room did not open on to the bathroom. It had to be reached via the corridor. It was smaller, papered with blue floral wallpaper, and the bed was a single one.

  This room was untidier than the other. The wardrobe door hadn’t been closed. A tweed coat bore the label of a New York fashion house. Not nearly as many shoes, only four pairs, two of them also from America. Last of all, on the table covered with an embroidered cloth which served as a dressing table, a collection of disparate objects: a pencil with a broken lead, a ballpoint pen, some change, some combs, some hairpins, a brush that had lost some of its bristles.

  Maigret recorded it all. When he came back down he was just as torpid as before, and with staring eyes.

  He discovered that the kitchen was on the ground floor, behind a partition that had been put up in a corner of what had been a carpenter’s workshop. He pushed the door open, while Gisèle Marton kept her eyes on him. It had a gas hob, a white food cupboard, a sink and a table covered with a waxed tablecloth.

  There was no washing-up lying around. The porcelain of the sink was dry.

  He went back to the others, who still stood frozen as if in a wax museum.

  ‘You will receive these gentlemen from the prosecutor’s office,’ he said to Lapointe. ‘Apologize to Doctor Paul on my behalf for not waiting for him. Ask him to call me as soon as he has done what needs to be done. I’m going to send you someone, I don’t yet know who …’

  He turned towards the two women.

  ‘If you would follow me …’

  Of the two, the sister-in-law was the more frightened, and it seemed as if she was repelled by the idea of leaving the house. Gisèle, on the other hand, had opened the door, and was standing stiffly waiting in the rain.

  The police officer had driven away the onlookers in the courtyard, but was unable to stop them forming a circle at the end of the alley, on the pavement. The old woman was still there, her purple shawl on her head as an umbrella. The Métro employee must have gone regretfully to work.

  They were looking at them the way the public always looks at comings and goings which look both mysterious and dramatic. The policeman parted the crowd to allow access to the car, and Maigret ushered the two women ahead of him.

  A voice said:

  ‘He’s arresting them …’

  He closed the door behind them and walked around the car to take his seat beside the uniformed driver.

  ‘To the Police Judiciaire.’

  The day was beginning to dawn, however vaguely. The rain was turning grey, the sky dirty. They overtook buses, and half-awake people were dashing down the stairs into the Métro.

  By the time they reached the river the streetlamps barely gave off any light, and the towers of Notre Dame stood out against the sky.

  The car drove into the courtyard. On the way, the two women hadn’t said a word, but one of them, Jenny, had sniffed several times. Once she had spent a long time blowing her nose. When she got out of the car her nose was red, as Marton’s had been on his first visit.

  ‘This way, please.’

  He walked ahead of them up the big staircase, which was just being swept, pushed open the glass-panelled door and looked around for Joseph but couldn’t see him. At last he showed them into his office, where he turned on the lights, looking briefly in on the inspectors’ office; there were only three of them in there, three who knew nothing about the case.

  He chose Janin at random.

  ‘Will you stay in my office with these ladies for a moment?’

  And, turning towards them:

  ‘Please, take a seat. I assume you haven’t had any coffee?’

  Jenny didn’t reply. Madame Marton shook her head.

  Maigret walked ostentatiously to the door, locked it from inside and put the key in his pocket.

  ‘It would be a good idea to take a seat,’ he said again, ‘because you’ll be here for a while.’

  He went into the other office.

  ‘Baron! Phone the Brasserie Dauphine. Tell them to bring a big pot of coffee … Black coffee … Three cups and some croissants …’

  After which he slumped on a chair, near the window, picked up another receiver and asked for the private number of the public prosecutor. He would just have got up and right now he would probably be getting dressed and having his breakfast. And yet it wasn’t a servant who answered, but the prosecutor himself.

  ‘Maigret here, sir … Marton is dead … The man I told you about yesterday morning. No, I’m at Quai des Orfèvres … I left an inspector at Avenue de Châtillon, Lapointe … Doctor Paul has been alerted … So has Criminal Records, yes … I don’t know … The two women are in my office …’

  He spoke in a low voice, even though the connecting door between the two rooms was closed.

  ‘I don’t think I can go there this morning … I’ll send another inspector to take over from Lapointe …’

  He almost looked guilty. Once the call was over he looked at his watch and chose to wait for Janvier, who would be there soon, and who knew about the case.

  After running his hands over his cheeks, he asked the third inspector, Bonfils, who was busy writing his report on the events of the evening:

  ‘Would you go to my cupboard and find my razor, my shaving soap and my towel?’

  He preferred not to do that in front of the two women. Holding his washing implements, he walked to the corridor and went into the toilets, where he took off his jacket and shaved. He took his time, as if to put off the moment when he would have to do what he still had to do. Having splashed cold water on his face, he returned to his colleagues and the waiter from the Brasserie Dauphine, who didn’t know where to set down his tray.

  ‘In my office … Over here …’

  He picked up the phone again, and this time he spoke to his wife.

  ‘I’m going to have a busy morning. I don’t yet know if I’ll be home for lunch.’

  His tired voice worried her:

  ‘Has something bad happened?’

  What could he say?

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m about to have my breakfast.’

  Finally, he said to Bonfils:

  ‘When Janvier comes, tell him to come and see me.’

  He went into his office, which the coffee-waiter was just leaving, and let Janin go. Then, as if in slow motion or in a dream, he poured coffee into the three cups.

  ‘Sugar?’ he asked Gisèle first of all.

  ‘Two, please.’

  He held out the cup and the plate of croissants, but she gestured that she didn’t want to eat.

  ‘Sugar?’

  The sister-in-law shook her head. She didn’t eat either, and he was the only one who nibbled on a warm croissant without much of an appetite.

  The day had broken, but it was still too dim to turn out the lights. Twice more, Jenny had opened her mouth to ask a question, but had given up both times at the sight of Maigret’s expression.

  The time had come. Maigret, who had poured himself a second cup of coffee, was slowly filling a pipe that he had chosen from among the pipes scattered on his desk.

  Then, still standing, he looked at the women in turn.

  ‘I think I’ll start with you,’ he murmured, stopping at Madame Marton.

  Jenny gave a start and, once again, wanted to say something.

  ‘As for you, I would like you to wait in another room with one of my inspectors.’

  He called Janin back.

  ‘Please take this lady to the green office and stay with her until I call you.’

  It wasn’t the first time this had happened. They were used to it.

  ‘
Certainly, chief.’

  ‘Isn’t Janvier here yet?’

  ‘I think I heard his voice in the corridor.’

  ‘Tell him to come straight away.’

  Janin left with the sister-in-law. Janvier came in a moment later and stopped with surprise as he recognized Madame Marton sitting on a chair, holding a cup of coffee.

  ‘Marton is dead,’ Maigret announced. ‘Lapointe is at the scene. He spent the night there and it would be a good idea to go and relieve him.’

  ‘No orders, chief?’

  ‘Lapointe will give you your instructions. If you take a car, you’ll get there before the prosecutors do.’

  ‘You’re not coming?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  At last the two doors were closed, and Maigret and Madame Marton were left alone in the office. It seemed as if she too had been waiting for that moment, and while he remained silent in front of her, puffing on his pipe, she grew slowly animated and began to shed some of her torpor, or rather her tension.

  It was curious to see her face turning human again, her skin colouring slightly, her eyes expressing something other than waiting.

  ‘You think I poisoned him, don’t you?’

  He took his time. It wasn’t the first time he had avoided, as he had just done, asking questions at the moment a crime had been revealed. It is often preferable to avoid making people talk too quickly, whether suspects or witnesses, because once they have spoken they feel they have to stick to what they said for fear that they will be accused of lying.

  He had deliberately given them both time to think, to decide on their attitudes and the statements they would make.

  ‘I don’t think anything,’ he murmured at last. ‘You’ll notice that I didn’t bring in the officer who takes shorthand. I won’t record what you say to me. Just tell me simply what happened.’

  He knew she was disconcerted by his calm demeanour and his simple way of speaking.

  ‘Let’s start with yesterday evening, for example.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything.’

  It was awkward. She was wondering where to start her story, and he helped her along a little.