The door to the adjoining office was open, and a secretary in her thirties stood up. Without taking any notice of Maigret, she said to her employer,
‘There have been two calls, one from Cannes—’
‘In a minute, Lucette.’
Gaillard seemed preoccupied.
‘Do you want to call a Paris number? The telephone’s there, in front of you.’
‘Thank you.’
The window looked on to a paved courtyard with a rather beautiful lime tree in the middle.
Maigret stood and dialled a number.
‘Hello! Has Inspector Lapointe come back? Put him on, will you … Thank you. Yes … Hello … Lapointe? Did you find what you were looking for?’
He listened for a long time while the lawyer moved around, rearranging files without sitting down at his desk.
‘Yes … Yes … I understand. Are you sure of the dates? Did you get him to sign a statement? No, I’m at Rue La Bruyère. Is Lucas back? Not yet?’
As he talked, he looked at the courtyard and saw a couple of blackbirds hopping about on the paving stones and the lawyer’s shadow as he walked back and forth in front of the window.
‘Wait for me, yes. I won’t be long, and I may have some news.’
He was entitled to put on a little act too, wasn’t he? Hanging up the telephone, he pretended to be embarrassed, scratching his head with a puzzled expression.
The two of them were still standing, and the lawyer was looking at him inquisitively. Maigret purposefully let the silence drag on. He broke it finally to say, with a hint of reproach in his voice, ‘Your memory isn’t very good, Monsieur Gaillard.’
‘What are you implying?’
‘Or, for some reason I can’t work out, you didn’t tell me the truth.’
‘About what?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I swear.’
This tall, strong man had been entirely sure of himself a few moments earlier. Now his face was like a little boy’s who has been caught doing something wrong but is still trying to act innocent.
‘I really don’t know what you mean.’
‘May I smoke?’
‘Please do.’
Maigret slowly filled his pipe, scowling like a man with an unpleasant task ahead of him.
‘Wouldn’t you like to sit down?’ the lawyer offered.
‘I’ll only be a moment. When I came to see you on Friday, I spoke to you about your car …’
‘You may have … We had a rather haphazard conversation, and I was sufficiently affected by what I’d just heard not to take in all the details.’
‘You told me that your car was usually parked in front of your house and that you left it there overnight.’
‘That’s correct. It spent last night there, and the night before. You may have seen it when you came in …’
‘But there were some days recently when it wasn’t there.’
The lawyer made as if to rack his brains.
‘Wait …’
He was very red in the face all of a sudden, and Maigret almost felt sorry him. He was clearly only maintaining a modicum of self-assurance thanks to a huge effort.
‘I can’t remember if it was last week or the week before that the car needed some repairs. I can ask my secretary. She rang the garage to get them to come and pick it up and fix it.’
There was a silence, during which he made no move for the connecting door.
‘Call her in.’
The lawyer pushed the door open eventually.
‘Will you come in here for a moment? The detective chief inspector has a question for you.’
‘Don’t worry, mademoiselle. It’s a very innocuous question. I’d like to know what day you called the garage to ask them to come and fetch the car.’
She looked at her employer as if seeking his permission to answer.
‘Monday afternoon,’ she said finally.
‘That’s last Monday, is it?’
‘Yes.’
She was pretty and likeable, and her white nylon dress revealed an alluring body. Were she and Gaillard …? That was no concern of Maigret’s for the moment.
‘Did it need a lot of work?’
‘I can show you the bill from the garage. It came this morning. They had to put in a new shock absorber. They thought they were going to be able to get the car back on Wednesday morning.’
‘But they couldn’t?’
‘They rang to apologize. It’s an American car. They had been hoping the spare parts would be in Paris but they ended up having to call the warehouse in Le Havre.’
Jean-Charles Gaillard was pretending to have no interest in the conversation. He had finally sat down at his desk and was looking through a file.
‘When was the car delivered?’
‘Thursday or Friday … Do you mind? It’s in my diary …’
She went into her office, then came back instantly.
‘Thursday evening. They had the shock absorber sent express and worked on it all day.’
‘Did you come back after dinner?’
Another glance at her employer.
‘No. I hardly ever do. Only when there’s something urgent.’
‘That wasn’t the case last week?’
She gave an emphatic shake of her head.
‘I haven’t worked late for at least a fortnight.’
‘Thank you, mademoiselle.’
She left the room and shut the door behind her. Maigret remained standing in the middle of the office, his pipe in his mouth.
‘Well, there it is,’ he grunted finally.
‘There what is?’
‘Nothing. A minor detail that may be important, or not. You know enough about our profession to understand we can’t overlook anything.’
‘I don’t see what my car …’
‘If you were in my place, you would … Thank you for letting me use your telephone. It’s time I was getting back to the office.’
The lawyer stood up.
‘Don’t you have anything else to ask me?’
‘What could that be? I asked you all the questions I wanted to ask you on Friday. I assume you answered truthfully, didn’t you?’
‘I’ve no reason …’
‘Naturally … Mind you, the car …’
‘I admit I forgot about that. It’s the third or fourth time that car has needed work in the last few months, which is why I’m planning to trade it in.’
‘Did you get around by taxi for three days?’
‘Exactly. I sometimes take taxis even when the car is outside. It saves having to look for a parking place …’
‘I understand. Are you in court this afternoon?’
‘No. I’ve already told you that I’m not in court very often. I’m more of a legal adviser.’
‘So you’ll be at home all day, will you?’
‘Unless I have a meeting somewhere. Just a moment …’
He opened the door of the adjoining office again.
‘Lucette! Will you see if I have to go out this afternoon?’
Maigret had the impression the girl had been crying. Her eyes and nose weren’t red, but she had a flustered, troubled look.
‘I don’t think so. All your meetings are here.’
She consulted the red diary all the same.
‘No.’
‘There’s your answer,’ concluded the lawyer.
‘Thank you.’
‘Do you think you’ll be needing me?’
‘I don’t have anything specific in mind, but you never know. Goodbye, mademoiselle.’
She nodded without looking up at him. Jean-Charles Gaillard went out into the corridor ahead of Maigret. The door of a waiting room was half open, and as they walked past Maigret caught sight of the legs of someone, a man, who was waiting.
‘Thank you again for letting me make that telephone call.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘I’ll be off now …’
When Maigret
turned round after walking about fifty metres along the pavement, Gaillard was still on his doorstep, watching him.
7.
It had happened a few times, frequently even, but never in such a clear-cut, characteristic way. He would be pursuing a particular line of inquiry with a doggedness in inverse proportion to how sure of himself he felt or how much actual information he had.
He would tell himself that there was nothing to stop him changing tack at any moment and pursuing a different line of inquiry.
He would send inspectors right and left. He would be convinced he wasn’t making any headway, then discover a small new clue and start cautiously edging forward.
And then suddenly, just when he least expected it, the investigation slipped out of his grasp. He wasn’t in charge any more. Events took over, forcing him to do things which he hadn’t anticipated and for which he wasn’t prepared.
In those cases there was always a tough hour or two to get through. He would question himself, wonder if he had been on the wrong track from the start, if it was all leading nowhere or, worse still, to some state of affairs utterly removed from the one he had imagined.
When it came down to it, what had been his only starting point? A simple conviction, backed up by experience, it was true: Members of the underworld, or mobsters, as they’re now called, don’t strangle people. They used guns, or sometimes knives, but there wasn’t a single strangling in the annals of the Police Judiciaire that could even remotely be ascribed to them.
Another piece of received wisdom was that professional criminals leave their victims where they kill them. Again, there wasn’t a single case in the archives of a mobster keeping a body in his home for a number of days before dumping it on a pavement somewhere.
Consequently Maigret had been mesmerized by Émile Boulay’s last evening, the telephone calls, him waiting on the pavement beside the uniformed Mickey, the moment when the former Transat waiter had finally strode off down Rue Pigalle.
Maigret’s entire hypothesis rested on this and the business of half a million francs being withdrawn from the bank on 22 May.
It presumed that there weren’t romantic rivalries in the Little Italy on Rue Victor-Massé, that the three women got along as well as they seemed to, that Boulay didn’t have a mistress somewhere, and finally that Antonio was an honest character.
Only one of these assumptions – or rather, convictions – had to be wrong for the entire investigation to collapse.
Perhaps that was why he still seemed bad-tempered and only proceeded with a sort of distaste.
It was hot that afternoon. The baking sun beat straight in at the window, prompting Maigret to pull down the blind. He and Lucas had taken off their jackets and, behind closed doors, were working on something that would probably have elicited, at best, a shrug from an examining magistrate.
It was true that the magistrate in charge of the case was leaving them in peace, convinced that it was just a trivial settling of criminal scores. The press didn’t seem remotely interested either.
‘Lawyers don’t kill their clients …’
This was becoming a refrain that Maigret couldn’t get out of his head, like a song he had heard too often on the radio or television.
‘Lawyers …’
Be that as it may, he had still gone to Maître Jean-Charles Gaillard’s house that morning after the funeral, but he had been as circumspect as possible. Falling in with the lawyer as if by accident as they were coming out of the church, he had accompanied him as far as Rue La Bruyère and made sure not to be too insistent in his questioning.
‘Lawyers don’t kill …’
It was no more incontrovertible or well-reasoned than the other assertion he had taken as his initial premise:
‘Mobsters don’t strangle …’
But you didn’t call a well-known lawyer into Quai des Orfèvres and subject him to several hours’ questioning without risking having the whole bar, if not the whole judiciary, on your back.
Some professions are more sensitive than others. He had noticed this when he had telephoned his friend Chavanon, and again when he had visited the ineffable Maître Ramuel.
‘Lawyers don’t kill their clients …’
And yet Jean-Charles Gaillard’s clients were the focus of the two men’s attention in the golden light of Maigret’s office. Lucas had come back from court with a list that a clerk of the court had helped him compile.
Lucas was also beginning to have an idea. It was still vague. He couldn’t exactly articulate what he was thinking.
‘The clerk told me something strange …’
‘What?’
‘He gave an odd smile when I mentioned Jean-Charles Gaillard’s name, for a start. Then I asked him for a list of cases Gaillard had taken on in the last two years, and he had even more of a mischievous glint in his eye.
‘ “You won’t find many of those,” he said.
‘ “Because he doesn’t have many clients?”
‘ “The opposite. From what I hear, he has a huge practice, and people say that he earns more money than some of the leading barristers who are in the Assizes every week.” ’
Lucas went on, intrigued:
‘I tried to get him to talk, but for a while he just searched through his files in silence. He was writing down names and dates on a sheet of paper and every now and then he’d mutter:
‘ “Acquitted …”
‘Then, after a bit:
‘ “Acquitted again …”
‘He still had that sly look on his face I found infuriating.
‘ “Well, well! Convicted … Ah, suspended sentence, naturally!”
‘This went on for a long time. The list kept growing. Acquittal after acquittal, and, if not suspended, then light sentences …
‘Finally I said:
‘ “He must be very good …”
‘He looked at me as if he was quietly making fun of me and sneered:
‘ “Particularly at picking his cases …” ’
This was the remark that intrigued Lucas. Maigret started turning it over in his mind.
Winning a trial was obviously more pleasant than losing it, not only for the defendant but also for his legal representative. The latter’s reputation would only grow and his clientele increase with each new success.
Picking his cases …
The two men were going through the list Lucas had brought. They had made an initial breakdown. Lucas had written the civil cases on one sheet of paper. As neither of them were familiar with that field, it made more sense to leave it to one side for the moment.
That left relatively few other cases, thirty or so in two years. Hence Jean-Charles Gaillard’s claim that he wasn’t in court very often.
Lucas went through the names one by one.
‘Hippolyte Tessier … Forgery … Acquitted on 1 September.’
Both racked their brains. If they couldn’t remember anything, Maigret went and opened the door of the inspectors’ office.
‘Tessier … Forgery … Ring any bells?’
‘Wasn’t he the manager of a casino somewhere in Brittany who tried to set up an illegal gambling den in Paris?’
They moved on to the next case.
‘Julien Vendre … Burglary … Acquitted.’
Maigret remembered him. He was a quiet man with the looks of a sad little clerk who had specialized in stealing transistors. He hadn’t been caught red-handed, and they didn’t have any hard evidence against him. Maigret had advised the judge not to press charges but to wait until he got himself in deeper.
‘Put him on the third piece of paper.’
As they worked like this, the hefty figure of Torrence was sitting on a shady café terrace opposite the lawyer’s house, and an unmarked police car was waiting a few metres down the road, not far from the blue American car.
If Torrence had to sit at his table all afternoon watching the door opposite, how many glasses of beer would he get through?
‘Urbain Poti
er … Receiving stolen goods … One year in prison, sentence suspended.’
Lucas had handled that case a few months earlier, and the man had come in to Quai des Orfèvres several times, a fat character as dishevelled as Monsieur Raison, the book-keeper, with tufts of black hair sticking out of his nostrils.
He ran a junk shop on Boulevard de la Chapelle. You could find anything there, from old oil lamps to refrigerators and tatty clothes.
‘I’m an honest shopkeeper. Humble, but honest. I had no idea when this guy came in to sell me some lead piping that he’d stolen it. I took him for …’
Maigret hesitated at every name. The door of the inspectors’ office was opened ten times.
‘Add him …’
‘Gaston Mauran … Car theft.’
‘A kid with red hair?’
‘It doesn’t say here.’
‘Last spring?’
‘Yes. April. There was a gang repainting cars and sending them to dealers in the country.’
‘Call Dupeu.’
Inspector Dupeu, who had been in charge of the investigation, happened to be next door.
‘Is this the red-haired kid who trotted out the story of his sick old mother?’
‘Yes, chief. There actually was a sick old mother. He was only nineteen at the time. He was the junior member of the gang. He just kept lookout while Mad Justin stole the cars …’
Two cases of pimping, a few more burglaries. Nothing momentous. Nothing that would have made the front page.
On the other hand, all the lawyer’s clients were broadly speaking professionals.
‘Go on,’ sighed Maigret.
‘That’s it. You told me not to go back more than two years.’
There wasn’t enough in there to take up the time of a lawyer who lived in a Parisian town-house, even if it was a fairly ordinary family home.
Of course you had to allow for the cases of his that hadn’t gone to court, which was probably most of them.
And then there was another type of client, like Boulay, who paid Jean-Charles Gaillard to do their tax returns.
Maigret was floundering. He was hot and thirsty and felt himself getting bogged down. He was tempted to start all over again.
‘Get the inspector of taxes for the ninth arrondissement on the telephone.’
It seemed like a shot in the dark, but he couldn’t justify leaving anything to chance at this point.
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