Maigret's Doubts (Inspector Maigret)

by Georges Simenon

  She shook her head. It didn’t mean either yes or no. She was in fact trying to dispel the nightmare.

  ‘Last night, when you left here,’ Maigret went on, ‘Marton imagined that after his medical examination he wouldn’t be freed … So he only had one evening … That was his last chance …’

  The behaviour of the toy salesman might have appeared incoherent, but it did contain a certain logic, and Maigret was beginning to understand certain passages in the psychiatric textbook. Except that what the author of the book expressed in difficult language and complicated phrases was in the end merely human.

  ‘When he went to the kitchen while you were there …’

  She shivered, wanting him to be quiet.

  ‘The herbal tea was already in the cups?’

  He was sure of it and didn’t need an answer.

  ‘Did you see him pouring in the powder?’

  ‘I had my back to him. He opened the cutlery drawer and took out a knife. I heard him rummaging among the knives …’

  ‘And you thought he didn’t have the courage to pour in the poison?’

  Maigret saw the knife again, with its dark wood handle, beside the radio, which had a catalogue lying on top of it.

  Beneath Maigret’s serious gaze, Jenny wrestled with herself a little before groaning:

  ‘I felt sorry …’

  He could have replied:

  ‘Not for your sister, at any rate?’

  And she went on:

  ‘I was sure he was going to be committed, that Gisèle had won the game … So …’

  ‘So you picked up the bottle of phosphide and poured a good dose into your sister’s cup. You had the presence of mind to wipe the bottle.’

  ‘I was holding a wet towel.’

  ‘You checked that the cup meant for your sister was on the right side of the tray.’

  ‘Please, inspector …! If you knew the night I’ve had …’

  ‘You heard everything?’

  ‘How could I not have done?’

  ‘And you didn’t come downstairs?’

  ‘I was too frightened.’

  She was shivering in retrospect, and it was for her that he opened the cupboard again.

  ‘Drink this.’

  She obeyed, choked and almost spat out the cognac, which stung her throat.

  It seemed that she had reached the point where she wanted to get down on the floor and lie there motionless without hearing another word.

  ‘If only your brother-in-law had told you everything …’

  Having collected herself, she wondered what she was going to hear now.

  And Maigret, who remembered the words that Xavier Marton had uttered in this very office, explained:

  ‘He didn’t plan to get rid of his wife or take his revenge on her with poison, but with his revolver.’

  Hadn’t he almost succeeded? Don’t psychiatrists talk about the rigorous logic of certain lunatics?

  It was into his cup, his own cup, that he had poured the phosphide while moving the knives about, so quickly that his sister-in-law, who had her back to him, had thought that he had given up at the last moment.

  He had measured the dose so as to be ill enough to explain what he was going to do next, but not enough to die of it. Not for no reason he had been haunting public libraries for months, immersing himself in medical and chemical textbooks.

  That was the dose that Gisèle Marton had had when she swapped the cups around on the tray, and she had only been slightly indisposed.

  And had Jenny worked all of that out during the endless night that she had spent in her room, listening to the noises of the house?

  The proof that she knew was that she hunched herself more and more on her chair, head lowered, and stammered as if she no longer had the strength to articulate:

  ‘I was the one who killed him …’

  He left her to her discomfort, avoiding making a noise, for fear of seeing her rolling on the floor, and then, on tiptoes, he went into the inspectors’ office.

  ‘Have her taken down … Be gentle … First to the infirmary …’ he said.

  He preferred not to do it himself. Standing in front of the window, he wasn’t even concerned about which inspectors were heading towards his office.

  It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have taken Marton to the psychiatrist the first time he came to see him. And the psychiatrist probably wouldn’t have assumed responsibility for a committal.

  There is a vague zone between responsibility and irresponsibility, a domain of shadows into which it is dangerous to venture.

  Two people at least had struggled there, while a third …

  ‘What will we do with the other one, chief?’

  He gave a start, turned around, looking at the vast inspectors’ office like a man who has just returned from a long journey.

  ‘Let her go.’

  He had nearly said:

  ‘Throw her the hell outside.’

  He waited for his own office to be free. Then he went back into it, and finding a residue of strange smells, opened the window.

  He was deeply inhaling the damp air when Lucas said behind him:

  ‘I don’t know if I did the right thing. Before she left, Madame Marton asked permission to make a phone call. I said yes, thinking that it might tell us something.’

  ‘What did she say to him?’

  ‘You know who she talked to?’

  ‘Harris.’

  ‘She calls him Maurice. She apologized for not having been there for the opening of the shop. She didn’t give any details. She just said: “I’ll tell you shortly …” ’

  Maigret closed the window and turned his back to it, and Lucas, after observing him for a moment, said anxiously:

  ‘What is it, chief?’

  ‘Nothing. What could there be? That’s what she said, and she isn’t a woman who makes mistakes. Right now, she’s in a taxi, holding a little mirror in front of her nose and adjusting her make-up …’

  He emptied his pipe into the ashtray.

  ‘Call the prosecutor’s office and, if Coméliau is back, tell him I’m coming to see him straight away.’

  It was over for him. The rest was a matter for the judges, and he had no wish to be in their place.

  1.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten your umbrella, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  The door was about to shut, and Maigret was already turning towards the stairs.

  ‘You’d better wear your scarf.’

  His wife ran to get it, unaware that this little remark would leave him out of sorts for some time, melancholy thoughts churning through his brain.

  It was only November – 3 November – and it wasn’t especially cold. It was just raining, one of those insistent showers out of a low, monotonous sky that, especially early in the morning, seem wetter and somehow more treacherous than other types of rain.

  Earlier, when he had got out of bed, he had winced because his neck hurt when he turned his head. You couldn’t call it a cricked neck, it just felt stiff, slightly tender.

  After coming out of the cinema the previous evening, they had walked home a fair way along the boulevards and it was already raining by then.

  None of this mattered, and yet thanks to the scarf – perhaps also the fact that it was a thick scarf his wife had knitted – he felt old.

  Going down the stairs, which had a trail of wet footprints, and outside, walking along under his umbrella, he thought back to what she had said the day before. In two years’ time he’d be retiring.

  He had been as excited as her at the prospect. They had spent ages idly chatting about the part of the country they were going to move to, Meung-sur-Loire, which they both loved.

  A little boy running along bare-headed bumped into
him and didn’t apologize. A young married couple walked past, arm in arm, sharing an umbrella; they must work in offices near one another.

  It had been a drearier Sunday than normal, perhaps because this year it happened to be All Souls’ Day. He could have sworn there was still a smell of chrysanthemums in the air this morning. From their window they had seen the families heading to the cemetery, but neither of them had any relatives buried in Paris.

  On the corner of Boulevard Voltaire, where he was waiting for his bus, he felt even more morose when he saw one of those huge new models without a rear platform come lumbering up. He’d not only have to sit down now, he’d also have to put out his pipe.

  Everyone has days like that, don’t they?

  Roll on the end of those two years! No more having to wrap up in a scarf and set off on grim, rainy mornings through a Paris that today looked as black and white as a silent film.

  The bus was full of young people; some recognized him, while others took no notice.

  On the embankment, the rain was colder and driving in at more of an angle. He ducked into the vaulted, draughty entrance of the Police Judiciaire, made a dash for the stairs and then, the moment he recognized the place’s inimitable smell, the murky gleam of the lights that were already on, he felt sad at the thought that, almost before he knew it, his days of coming here every morning would be over.

  Old Joseph, who for mysterious reasons seemed exempt from retirement, gave him a conspiratorial nod and muttered, ‘Inspector Lapointe is waiting for you, detective chief inspector.’

  As usual on a Monday the waiting room and huge corridor were thronged with people. A few unfamiliar faces, two or three young women who seemed jarringly out of place, but mainly regulars who you’d periodically see waiting outside one door or other.

  He went into his office, hung up his overcoat, his hat, that scarf, deliberated whether to open the umbrella and put it to dry in a corner, as Madame Maigret recommended, then ended up leaving it with everything else in a corner of the cupboard.

  It was barely 8.30. Letters were waiting on his blotter. He went and opened the door of the inspectors’ office, signalled to Lucas, Torrence and two or three others.

  ‘Someone tell Lapointe I’m here.’

  Word would go around that the chief was in a foul mood, but that wasn’t true. Sometimes, looking back, it’s days when you’ve been gruff, gloomy, irritable that strike you as your happiest.

  ‘Morning, chief.’

  Lapointe was pale, and his eyes, although a little red from lack of sleep, were sparkling with pleasure. He was twitching with impatience.

  ‘That’s it! We’ve got him!’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘In the box room at the end of the corridor. Torrence is keeping an eye on him.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Four this morning.’

  ‘Has he talked?’

  ‘I sent down for some coffee, then breakfast for two around six. We’ve been chatting away like old friends.’

  ‘Go and get him.’

  This was quite a coup. Grégoire Brau, otherwise known as Patience or the Monk, had been working for years without anyone coming close to catching him.

  He’d only been nabbed once, twelve years earlier, when he had overslept. He had done his time then picked up exactly where he’ had left off.

  He came into the office behind a cock-a-hoop Lapointe, who looked as if he had landed the biggest trout or pike of the year, and stood awkwardly in front of Maigret, who was immersed in some papers.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Maigret said.

  As he finished reading a letter, he added:

  ‘Have you got any cigarettes?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur Maigret.’

  ‘You may smoke.’

  He was a fat fellow of forty-three who must have been pudgy and doughy even when he was at school. He was fair-skinned, with pink cheeks that turned red at the drop of a hat, a bulbous nose, a double chin, a guileless-looking mouth.

  ‘So, they got you after all, eh?’

  ‘They got me.’

  Maigret had arrested him the first time, and they had often come across one another since, greeting each other without any hard feelings.

  ‘You’ve been at it again,’ Maigret went on, referring to a break-in at an apartment.

  Rather than deny it, the Monk smiled modestly. They couldn’t prove anything. And yet, even if he never left a fingerprint, his burglaries effectively all bore his signature.

  He worked alone, planning each job with incredible patience. He was the epitome of a quiet man, passionless, nerveless, no hidden vices.

  He spent most of his time in the corner of a bar, or café, or restaurant, apparently deep in a newspaper or drowsing, but actually with his ears peeled, catching every word that was being said around him.

  He was also a great reader of the weeklies, carefully studying their society pages and gossip columns, keeping himself exceptionally up to date with the movements of people in the public eye.

  And then the next thing anyone knew, the Police Judiciaire would receive a telephone call from a celebrity – an actor, say, or film star – who had just come back from Hollywood – or London, or Rome, or Cannes – to find his apartment had been burgled.

  Maigret wouldn’t have to hear the whole story before he asked:

  ‘What about the refrigerator?’

  ‘Cleaned out!’

  Ditto the drinks cabinet. And he could be sure that the bed had been slept in and the owner’s pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers put to good use.

  This was the Monk’s signature, an obsession he had acquired when he’d started out at the age of twenty-two, perhaps because in those days he really was hungry and longed to sleep in a decent bed. When he was certain that an apartment was going to be empty for several weeks, that there wouldn’t be any staff staying on, that the concierge hadn’t been instructed to air it, he’d break in without needing to use a jemmy because he knew all the locksmiths’ secrets.

  Once inside, rather than hurriedly rounding up everything of value – jewellery, paintings, ornaments – he would settle in for a while, generally until all the provisions in the apartment had been exhausted.

  As many as thirty empty tins had been found after one of his visits, as well as a considerable number of bottles, of course. He read, he slept, he used the bathroom with a sort of voluptuous delight, and the building’s other occupants wouldn’t suspect a thing.

  After which he would go home and resume his usual routine, only going out in the evening for a game of belote to one of the seedier bars on Avenue des Ternes, where, because he worked alone and never talked about his exploits, he was regarded with a mixture of respect and suspicion.

  ‘Did she write or did she ring you up?’

  The melancholy in the Monk’s voice as he asked this question recalled Maigret’s when he had left home a while ago.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know very well, Monsieur Maigret. They wouldn’t have got me otherwise. Your inspector,’ he turned to Lapointe, ‘was hiding on the stairs of the block before I got there, and I suppose he had a colleague in the street. Is that right?’

  ‘It is.’

  Lapointe had actually spent two nights on the stairs of the block in Passy where someone called Monsieur Ailevard had an apartment. This gentleman had gone to London for a fortnight, travel plans which had been announced in the newspapers, because he was involved with a film and an extremely famous film star.

  The Monk didn’t always rush to people’s places the moment they left. He bided his time, took all the necessary precautions.

  ‘I’m wondering how I missed your inspector. Anyway, that’ll teach me … Did she ring you?’

  Maigret shook his head.

  ‘Did she write to you?’

&
nbsp; He nodded.

  ‘I don’t suppose you can show me the note, can you? Is it true that she had to disguise her writing?’

  She hadn’t even done that. Not that there was any point telling him.

  ‘I suspected this would happen one day, although I didn’t want to believe it. She’s a bitch, with all due respect, but I still can’t bring myself to be angry with her … At least I’ll have had two good years, eh?’

  He hadn’t had any romantic attachments for years, as far as anyone could tell. People would tease him about his weight, saying it wasn’t surprising he led such a chaste life.

  Then suddenly, at the age of forty-four, he had set up house with a woman called Germaine, who was twenty years younger than him and recently to be seen soliciting on Avenue de Wagram.

  ‘Was it a registry office wedding?’

  ‘We had a church service too. She’s from Brittany. I suppose she’s already moved into Henri’s?’

  He was referring to a young pimp, Henri My Eye.

  ‘He’s moved into your apartment.’

  The Monk wasn’t outraged, wasn’t cursing his luck, just himself.

  ‘How long am I going to get?’

  ‘Two to five years. Has Inspector Lapointe taken your statement?’

  ‘He wrote down what I told him.’

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Hello, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’

  He listened, frowning.

  ‘Repeat the name, please.’

  He reached for a notepad, wrote: Lachaume.

  ‘Quai de la Gare? Ivry? Ok … Is there a doctor in attendance? The man’s definitely dead, is he?’

  The Monk had suddenly become less important, which he seemed to sense. Without needing to be asked, he got to his feet, saying:

  ‘I imagine you’ve got things to do …’

  Maigret turned to Lapointe.

  ‘Take him to the cells, then go to bed.’

  He opened the cupboard to get his overcoat and hat, then thought again and held out his hand to the fat man with the pink cheeks.

  ‘It’s not our fault, my friend.’

  ‘I know.’

  He didn’t put on the scarf. In the inspectors’ office, he chose Janvier, who had just got in and wasn’t working on anything yet.