The Yellow Dog

by Georges Simenon

Fifteen or twenty people were clustered at the door. The inspector elbowed through them.

  In the dispensary, a man laid out flat on the floor was emitting rhythmic moans as he stared at the ceiling.

  The pharmacist’s wife, in her nightgown, was making more noise than all the rest of them together.

  And the pharmacist himself, who had slipped a jacket on over his pyjamas, was in a panic, shuffling phials around, tearing open large packages of absorbent cotton.

  ‘Who is it?’ Maigret asked.

  He didn’t wait for the answer; he had already recognized the customs uniform, its trouser leg slit open. And now he recognized the face.

  It was the customs guard who had been on duty in the port the Friday before and had witnessed the Mostaguen shooting from a distance.

  A doctor arrived in a rush, looked at the wounded man, then at Maigret, and cried, ‘What next?’

  A little blood had run on to the floor. The pharmacist had washed the guard’s leg with hydrogen peroxide, which left streaks of rosy foam.

  Outside, a man was telling his tale, perhaps for the tenth time, but in a voice still gasping with excitement nonetheless.

  ‘My wife and I were asleep when I heard a noise that sounded like a gunshot, and a cry! Then nothing more, for maybe five minutes. I didn’t dare go back to sleep. My wife wanted me to go and look. Then we heard these moans that sounded as if they were coming from right in front of our door. I opened it – I had a gun – and I saw a dark shape. I recognized the uniform. I shouted, to wake up the neighbours. And the fruitseller – he has a car – helped me bring the fellow here—’

  ‘What time did you hear the shot?’

  ‘Half an hour ago.’

  That was just when the scene between Emma and the man of the huge footprints was at its most intense.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘I’m the sailmaker. You’ve passed my house a dozen times, on the right side of the harbour, past the fish market. My house is at the corner of the quay and a little street … After that, the buildings thin out, and there’s almost nothing except private houses.’

  Four men carried the wounded customs guard into a back room, where they laid him on a couch. The doctor gave instructions. In the shop, the mayor’s voice could be heard asking, ‘Is the inspector here?’

  Maigret went and stood in front of him, his hands in his pockets.

  ‘You must admit, chief inspector …’

  But Maigret’s look was so cold that the mayor was disconcerted for a moment.

  ‘It’s our man who did this … no?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know because at the moment the crime was committed I had just as clear a view of him as I have of you right now.’

  ‘And you didn’t arrest him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I hear he assaulted a policeman, too.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Do you realize what repercussions this kind of thing could have? … You know, it’s since you’ve been here that—’

  Maigret picked up the telephone. ‘Give me the police barracks, mademoiselle … Yes, thanks … Hello! Is this the sergeant? Chief Inspector Maigret here. Dr Michoux is still there, of course? … What’s that? … Yes, go and check anyway. You’ve got a man posted in the courtyard? … Good. I’ll wait.’

  ‘You believe it’s the doctor who—’

  ‘Not at all! I never believe anything, Monsieur le Maire … Yes! He hasn’t moved? Thank you … Asleep, eh? … Very good … No, nothing special.’

  Groans sounded from the back room, and soon a voice called, ‘Inspector …’

  It was the doctor, who was wiping his soapy hands on a towel.

  ‘You can question him now. The bullet only grazed his calf. He’s more scared than hurt. Although I should say that he lost a lot of blood.’

  The customs man had tears in his eyes. He flushed when the doctor went on: ‘He was frightened because he thought we would cut off his leg … The fact is, in a week the thing won’t even show.’

  The mayor stood framed in the doorway.

  ‘Tell me how it happened,’ Maigret said gently as he sat on the edge of the couch. ‘Don’t be afraid … You heard what the doctor said.’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Well, tell me what you can.’

  ‘I got off duty tonight at ten o’clock. I live a little past the corner where I was wounded—’

  ‘You didn’t go directly home?’

  ‘No. The lights were still on at the Admiral. And I wanted to find out the latest … I swear my leg is burning up!’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ the doctor said firmly.

  ‘But I’m telling you … Well, as long as it’s not serious. I had a beer at the café. Only the reporters were there, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask them.’

  ‘Who served you?’

  ‘A chambermaid, I think. I didn’t see Emma.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I headed for home. I stopped at the booth to light a cigarette off my colleague’s pipe. Then I went along the quay, turned right … There was no one around. The sea was quite pretty … All of a sudden, just as I got a little past a corner, I felt a pain in my leg, even before I heard the shot. It felt like a cobblestone hitting me hard in the calf. I fell down … I tried to get up. Someone was running … Then my hand touched something hot and wet, and, I don’t know how it happened, but I passed out … I thought I was dead …

  ‘When I came to, the fruitseller at the corner had his door open and was standing there, afraid to come out. That’s all I know.’

  ‘You didn’t see the person who fired?’

  ‘I didn’t see anything. It doesn’t happen the way people think … There’s a moment when you’re falling down … and then, when my hand felt the blood …’

  ‘You don’t have any enemies you can think of?’

  ‘No. I’ve only been here two years … I come from inland … and in that time I’ve never spotted any smugglers.’

  ‘Do you always go home by that route?’

  ‘No. That’s the longest way … But I had no matches, and so I went over to the booth to light my cigarette. Then, instead of cutting through town, I just went along the waterfront.’

  ‘It’s shorter through town?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘So that someone who saw you leave the café and head along the quay would have had time to get in position for an ambush?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But why? I never carry money on me … And anyhow, they didn’t try to rob me.’

  ‘You’re quite sure, inspector, that you never lost sight of your drifter the whole evening?’ There was an edge to the mayor’s voice.

  Leroy came in, holding out a piece of paper.

  ‘A telegram. The post office has just phoned it to the hotel. It’s from Paris.’

  And Maigret read:

  Sûreté Générale to Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, Concarneau. Jean Goyard, alias Servières, per your description, arrested Monday night at eight, Hotel Bellevue, Rue Lepic, Paris, while moving into room 15. Admits arriving from Brest by six o’clock train. Protests innocence and demands presence of counsel at further interrogation. Await instructions.

  8. Plus One

  ‘You’ll agree perhaps, chief inspector, that it’s time we had a serious talk …’

  The mayor had said this in a tone of icy formality, and Leroy did not know Maigret well enough yet to judge his reaction from the way he blew out his pipe smoke. A slender grey stream emerged slowly from the inspector’s half-open lips, and he blinked two or three times. Then he drew his notebook from his pocket and looked around at the pharmacist, the doctor, the bystanders.

  ‘At your service, Monsieur le Maire … Here is—’

  ‘If you’d lik
e to have a cup of tea at my house,’ the mayor interrupted hastily, ‘I have my car at the door. I’ll wait till you’ve given the necessary orders.’

  ‘What orders?’

  ‘But … the murderer, the drifter … that girl …?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Well, if the police have nothing better to do, they can keep an eye on the railway stations round here.’ He wore his most ingenuous expression. ‘Leroy, wire Paris to send Goyard here. Then go to bed.’

  He got in the mayor’s car, which was driven by a chauffeur in black livery. As they neared White Sands, they caught sight of the mayor’s house. It was built directly on the cliff, which made it look somewhat like a feudal chateau. Lights shone from several windows.

  The two men had barely exchanged two sentences in the course of the drive. ‘Allow me to show you a few points of interest,’ the mayor had tried.

  At the villa, he handed his fur coat to a butler. ‘Madame has gone to bed?’

  ‘No, sir. She is waiting for you in the library.’

  They found her there. She was about forty years old and looked young next to her husband, who was sixty-five. She nodded to the inspector.

  ‘Well?’

  Very much the man of the world, the mayor kissed her hand, which he kept in his as he said, ‘Don’t worry. A customs guard was slightly wounded … And I hope that after the conversation we’re about to have, Chief Inspector Maigret and I, this unconscionable nightmare will come to an end.’

  She left, with a rustle of silk. A blue plush drape fell back into place at the door.

  The huge library had walls lined with fine panelling and exposed ceiling beams, like those in an English manor house. Fairly rich bindings could be seen on the shelves, but more precious ones were apparently kept in a closed bookcase that covered one whole wall.

  The setting was one of real luxury, faultless taste, utter comfort. There was central heating, but logs blazed in a monumental fireplace. There was no comparison with the false elegance of the doctor’s house.

  The mayor selected a box of cigars and held it out to Maigret.

  ‘Thank you! If you’ll allow me, I’ll smoke my pipe.’

  ‘Please sit down … Will you have a whisky?’

  He pressed a buzzer, then lit a cigar. The butler came in to serve them. And, perhaps on purpose, Maigret seemed to have the awkward manner of a petit bourgeois visiting an aristocratic house. His features looked heavy, his gaze vague.

  His host waited for the butler to leave. ‘I’m sure you understand, chief inspector, that this series of crimes cannot go on. It’s been … let’s see … three days now since you arrived. And in all that time—’

  From his pocket Maigret drew his cheap little oilcloth-covered notebook.

  ‘May I?’ he interrupted. ‘You mention a series of crimes … Now I’d like to point out that all the victims are alive except one. A single death: Monsieur Le Pommeret’s … As for the customs guard, you’ll admit that anyone who really wanted to kill him would not have shot him in the leg. You know the place where the shot was fired. The attacker was hidden, so he could take all the time he needed. Unless he’d never held a revolver before …’

  The mayor looked at him with astonishment and, seizing his glass, said, ‘So you claim—’

  ‘That the assailant meant to wound him in the leg … At least until we have proof to the contrary.’

  ‘Did Monsieur Mostaguen’s assailant mean to hit him in the leg, too?’

  The sarcasm was obvious, and the man’s nostrils quivered. He was straining to be polite, to keep calm, because he was in his own home. But there was a disagreeable edge to his voice.

  His manner that of a proper civil servant reporting to his superior, Maigret went on:

  ‘If you’ll allow me, we’ll go over my notes one by one … I read from the date of Friday, 7 November: A bullet is fired through the letterbox of a vacant house towards Monsieur Mostaguen. Remember, to begin with, that no one, not even the victim, could have known that at a given moment Monsieur Mostaguen would get the idea of stopping in a doorway to light his cigar. A little less wind and the crime would never have occurred … Of course, there was a man with a revolver behind the door … Either he was crazy or he was waiting for someone who was supposed to come. Now then, remember what time it was. Eleven o’clock at night. The whole town was asleep, except for the little group at the Admiral café.

  ‘I’m drawing no conclusions, but let’s run through the possible guilty parties. Le Pommeret and Jean Servières, and Emma too, are out of the running, because they were still in the café.

  ‘That leaves Dr Michoux, who had left fifteen minutes earlier, and the vagrant with the enormous footprints. Plus an unknown person we’ll call X. Are we in agreement? … We should add, parenthetically, that Monsieur Mostaguen did not die and that in two weeks he’ll be on his feet again …

  ‘Let’s go to the second incident. The following day, Saturday, I enter the café. After introductions, I am about to drink an aperitif with Messieurs Michoux, Le Pommeret, and Jean Servières, when the doctor suddenly becomes suspicious of something in his glass. Analysis shows the Pernod bottle to be poisoned.

  ‘Possible culprits: Michoux, Le Pommeret, Servières; Emma, the waitress; the vagrant – who might have entered the café some time during the day without being seen – and also our unknown person designated X.

  ‘Let’s continue. Sunday morning, Jean Servières disappears. His car is found, with bloodstains, not far from his home. Before this discovery, the Brest Beacon receives a report of the events nicely calculated to sow panic in Concarneau.

  ‘Then Servières is seen, first in Brest, later in Paris, where he seems to be hiding and to which he has apparently gone of his own free will.

  ‘Only one possible culprit here: Servières himself.

  ‘The same day, Sunday, Monsier Le Pommeret has an aperitif with the doctor, returns to his home, has dinner there and dies afterwards, from the effects of strychnine poisoning.

  ‘Possible culprits: at the café, if that’s where he was poisoned, the doctor, Emma and again our X. This time, the vagrant has to be ruled out, because the café was never empty for a moment, and it wasn’t the bottle that was poisoned – only the one glass.

  ‘If the crime was committed in Le Pommeret’s own house, possible culprits: his landlady, the vagrant and our sempiternal X.

  ‘Bear with me now; we’re coming to the end. Tonight, Monday, a customs guard is shot in the leg as he walks down an empty street. The doctor is still in prison, under close watch. Le Pommeret is dead. Servières is in Paris in the hands of the Sûreté. Emma and the vagrant are at that very moment embracing and then devouring a chicken, before my own eyes.

  ‘Thus, only one possible culprit: X. That is to say, a person we haven’t yet encountered in the course of events. A person who could have committed all the crimes, or only this last one.

  ‘We don’t know who this person is. We have no description of him. Just one clue: whoever it is, he was interested in making something happen tonight – had a pressing interest. That bullet wasn’t fired by a random prowler.

  ‘Now, don’t ask me to arrest X. Because you’ll agree, Monsieur le Maire, that anyone in town – especially someone who knows the principal characters involved in this business and, in particular, the regular customers at the Admiral café – could be that X.

  ‘Even you.’

  These last words were spoken casually as Maigret leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs towards the fire. The mayor gave the merest start. ‘I hope that’s just a little retaliation …’

  Then Maigret stood up suddenly, knocked out his pipe on the hearth and declared, as he walked up and down:

  ‘Not at all! You wanted answers? Well, there you are. I just wanted to show you that a case like this is no simple little police operation that can be handled b
y making a few telephone calls from an armchair … And I will add, Monsieur le Maire, with all due respect, that when I take charge of an investigation, I insist above all, dammit, on being left alone!’

  That came out with no premeditation. It had been incubating for days. Perhaps to calm down, Maigret took a swallow of whisky and looked at the door like a man who has said what he has to say and is waiting for permission to leave.

  The mayor was silent for a few minutes, contemplating the white ash of his cigar. Finally, he let it fall into a blue porcelain bowl and rose slowly, his eyes seeking Maigret’s.

  ‘Listen, chief inspector …’

  He must have been weighing his words, for they were separated by pauses.

  ‘I may have been wrong, in the course of our brief connection, to show some impatience …’

  This was rather unexpected – especially in this setting, where the man seemed more aristocratic than ever, with his white hair, his silk-trimmed smoking jacket, his sharply creased grey trousers.

  ‘I am beginning to appreciate your true worth. In these few minutes, by means of a simple summary of the facts, you’ve made me understand the terrible mystery of this business. It’s more complex than I ever suspected. I confess your inertia in the matter of the vagrant did dispose me against you.’ He approached the inspector and touched his shoulder. ‘I ask you not to hold it against me … I have some heavy responsibilities myself.’

  It would have been impossible to guess Maigret’s thoughts as his thick fingers packed his pipe from a worn tobacco pouch. Through a large window, his gaze wandered over the vast ocean horizon.

  ‘What’s that light?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘The beacon.’

  ‘No, I mean that small light to the right.’

  ‘That’s Dr Michoux’s house.’

  ‘The servant’s back, then?’

  ‘No. It’s Madame Michoux, the doctor’s mother. She came back this afternoon.’

  ‘You’ve seen her?’

  Maigret thought he sensed some discomfort in his host.

  ‘Well, she was surprised not to find her son at home. She came by to ask. I told her about the arrest, explaining that it was mainly a protective measure … Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? She asked my authorization to visit him … At the hotel, no one knew where you were. So I took it on myself to permit the visit.