‘What if he isn’t home?’
Maigret’s face darkened and he made a helpless gesture. ‘If he’s not home … well, I suppose we can only wait for a phone call from the river patrol, unless he’s managed to get hold of a revolver … Just a minute … Anyway, telephone me at – wait a moment, who’s likely to have a telephone at home? Dandurand, for sure! Telephone me at Charles Dandurand’s address. You’ll find the number in the phone book. Goodnight, then.’
He went back into his own office for a moment, just long enough to scrutinize the Pole slowly from head to foot, as if taking the man’s moral temperature. As he left he winked at Lucas, who went back to interrogating the Pole. The wink meant that they’d soon have him where they wanted him.
A taxi took Maigret to Route d’Orléans, and he got out opposite the apartment building, which was beginning to be a familiar sight. Who was on watch? He glanced around, and a figure moved out of the shadows.
‘I’m here, sir.’
Verduret was a recent recruit, a nice boy, in awe of his boss, so much so that he was inclined to stutter when he talked to him.
‘Any news?’
‘The fourth-floor tenant, Monsieur Charles, came home by tram at six. Someone was waiting for him in the corridor. A fat little man, sir, in a grey overcoat with a half-belt at the back and a briefcase under his arm.’
A moment’s thought enabled Maigret to place the visitor. He must be the lawyer representing Monfils, Maître Leloup.
‘Did he stay long?’
‘Half an hour. Monsieur Siveschi, the Hungarian gentleman, went out about five, and I haven’t seen him come back yet. And then there’s his daughter …’
The young officer pointed to two figures merging with the shadows, standing by the fence round some waste ground.
‘It’s been going on for three-quarters of an hour,’ he sighed, ‘and they don’t so much as move.’
Imperceptibly Maigret blushed and went into the building. In passing, he greeted Madame Benoit, who was sitting over a plate of soup, and weightily climbed the four floors up. Monsieur Charles must have recognized his step, because he opened the door before the inspector rang the bell.
‘I was expecting you. Please come in. After your conversation with my friends this morning …’
There were no two ways about it, Maigret couldn’t get used to the rancid odour of the old bachelor’s apartment. He felt a revulsion for it that was both physical and moral and was puffing out dense clouds of smoke.
‘What did Maître Leloup come for?’
‘You already know he’s been here? He’s threatening me with proceedings for misappropriation of the inheritance. He feels sure that Juliette made a will, basing his evidence on the letters that she wrote her cousin Monfils every New Year. You’d better ask him to let you see them. She describes her nephew and nieces as degenerate parasites, tells him how ungrateful they’ve been to her and says that after all she’s done for them in memory of her sister they’re only after her money. “It will serve them right,” she ended one letter, “and the Boynets and Machepieds too, when they discover that I’ve left everything to you.”’
‘Did Maître Leloup confine himself to threats?’
The grey-faced Monsieur Charles stretched his lips in an icy smile. ‘He made me what he calls generous and honest propositions.’
‘Share and share alike?’
‘Something of that nature. Which would be an appreciable sum if there was a will.’ Monsieur Dandurand cracked his finger joints. ‘But those people didn’t know Juliette. To tell you the truth, I was the only one to see her as she really was. She was so terrified of death, and having to leave her money behind some day, that she was close to believing she’d never die. Or at least not for a very long time. “When I’m an old woman,” she was always saying to me …’
Obnoxious as the man was, Maigret sensed that he was not lying. All he himself had seen of Juliette was a corpse with badly tinted hair, but his impression corresponded exactly with what Monsieur Charles said.
‘So the outcome was …’
‘I showed Maître Leloup the door. But that’s not why I phoned you. I realize that my situation is a delicate one, and I can see that my best chance is for you to find the murderer …’
‘Or murderers,’ growled Maigret, scrutinizing a watercolour hanging on the wall.
‘Or murderers, if you like. Indeed, there’s nothing to prove that there weren’t several of them involved.’
‘In any case, there are two bodies, so that means there were two crimes.’
And Maigret placidly refilled and lit his pipe.
‘That’s certainly one theory … I was telling you that after you left, I remembered something,’ said Monsieur Charles. He took a notebook covered in waxcloth off the corner of his desk. ‘I wasn’t a practising lawyer for so many years without acquiring some of the habits of the profession. Every time I took Juliette the interest on her investments, I made sure to write down the numbers of the banknotes … it may be ridiculous, but as it happens that might come in useful for you.’
The notebook was full of figures.
‘Don’t forget, I had nothing else to fill my days.’
Indeed, Maigret could well imagine him sitting in this study, with its smell of crushed bugs, copying down column after column of figures with chilly satisfaction. Never mind the fact that the banknotes were not his! He still enjoyed the sensual pleasure of fingering them, recording their numbers, sorting them into bundles, grouping the bundles together and putting elastic bands round them.
‘So you see,’ he concluded, holding the notebook out to Maigret, ‘that if you earn the reward offered by my friends, I shall have assisted you to the best of my ability.’
Nouchi could be heard on her way home, going up the stairs three at a time. She stopped for a moment outside Monsieur Charles’ door. Had she been behaving as badly as the plump girl in the cinema?
What business of his was that? In what way did the girl’s words and actions …
‘As it happens, I didn’t dine at my usual restaurant because I was waiting for you, so I made do with a cold cutlet. Have you dined yourself? Will you take a little glass of something?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘One day you’ll realize that I’ve done all I could, and – well, just as you like.’
As Maigret opened the door, without even saying that he was leaving, he let in blasts of piano music. No doubt Mademoiselle Paucot, the piano teacher, was getting her revenge on the scales through which her pupils stumbled.
8.
One day, when Madame Maigret was looking pensively at her husband, she had suddenly sighed, with almost comical candour, ‘I do wonder why you haven’t been slapped in the face more often in your life.’
It was deeply heartfelt. In fact there were moments when, even with her, Maigret could be extraordinarily overbearing, and his wife was probably the only one who knew that he was entirely unaware of it. It wasn’t that you saw an ironic smile or a glint of mockery in his eyes, nothing like that. You found yourself facing a solid block offering nothing you could get a grip on, a man who continued to be absorbed in his internal monologue while you were talking and getting worked up. Was the inspector listening to you? Did he see you, or only the wall above your head? He would suddenly interrupt you in the middle of a sentence or a word, and what he said bore no relation to your preceding remarks.
So while Charles Dandurand was still talking, while the door, standing ajar, was letting in piano chords, Maigret froze as if intent on the music. How long since he had stopped taking part in the conversation? Where had his mind been straying?
‘You have a telephone, I suppose?’ he asked.
‘Why, yes. I do.’
Did he even know that Dandurand was in front of him, waiting to be able to close his door? He hesitated, in mid-soliloquy.
‘I wonder …’
He didn’t do it on purpose, and yet the former lawyer was not the on
ly one to have been taken aback by his manner. What did he want? What had he thought up now? Was it important or immaterial? You couldn’t guess from seeing him draw his thick eyebrows together in a frown, nod his head and finally murmur, ‘Oh yes, I forgot to tell you – I gave a colleague your address, in case he needed to telephone me. While I wait to hear from him, I’ll ask you to go upstairs with me. We’ll be sure to hear if the phone rings from up there.’
‘Is it all right if I take my key?’
On the fifth-floor landing, the inspector paused.
‘You said it was a little after midnight when you visited Madame Boynet. You had your slippers on?’
He looked at Monsieur Charles’s feet, encased in brown kid slippers.
‘I don’t suppose you used to ring her bell?’
‘Juliette would wait on the other side of the door. I didn’t even have to knock.’
‘Right. Let’s go in. Was there a light on in the front hall?’
‘No, the only light came from the sitting room. She left the door ajar.’
‘Just a moment. I’ll put the sitting-room light on.’
‘Not that one, inspector. Only the fake alabaster night-light on the pedestal table.’
Monsieur Charles was annoyed, but he seemed to be entering into the spirit of Maigret’s game without any sign of anxiety. He seemed to be saying: see, this trick of yours doesn’t impress me. I have nothing to fear and nothing to hide. On the contrary! Like you, I’m looking only for the truth. So if you’re after a meticulous reconstruction, that’s what you’ll get.
Out loud, he said, ‘I can tell you that I was wearing the same suit as today, but with a white muffler. And I was holding – no, in the right-hand inside pocket of my jacket I had an envelope containing …’
‘In a minute. If you don’t mind, first we’ll put this room back in order. You must know where every piece of furniture and every ornament should go.’
They were equally grave-faced, and Monsieur Charles, as if ironically, took the greatest care to find the precise place where every chair had stood, then standing back to consider the effect of his labours.
‘There! I think that was it.’
‘One question, please. I suppose that Madame Boynet had her stick in one hand when she went to open the door to you?’
‘She’d have had difficulty in walking without it.’
‘Can you tell me what she was wearing?’
‘That’s easy enough. She had a greenish dressing gown on over her night-clothes. I remember noticing that her stockings were drooping in wrinkles round her ankles.’
‘Both her stockings?’
‘Both of them, yes. She was in the habit of wearing two stockings, if that’s what you want to know. And old slip-on shoes with felt soles. Juliette wasn’t vain. In fact I think she felt some satisfaction in appearing at her least attractive – that evening her hair was down, her face shiny with night cream and her eyes puffy.’
‘You didn’t notice any other light in the apartment and you confirm that you didn’t leave this room?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Where was Madame Boynet sitting?’
‘Facing her desk, which she had opened. She knew that I was coming to settle the accounts for her.’
‘One moment … where did she get the key to open the desk?’
This time the lawyer hesitated slightly.
‘I … no, as a matter of fact I don’t remember. I suppose she had the key in her dressing-gown pocket.’
‘Tell me, Monsieur Dandurand … if she opened the desk when you were coming to give her a statement of accounts, then she must have kept her business papers in it.’
‘Well, yes.’ Monsieur Charles, looking more serious, thought about it. ‘You’re right. I confess that I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘What did you talk about all that time?’
‘We never talked much. I must have told her that I thought I’d caught a cold in town, which explained my muffler. And I told her that I would probably have to go to Béziers.’
After looking round the room, Maigret asked an even more unexpected question. ‘Were all these clocks working?’
Some of them had stopped now, and the inspector automatically went to wind them up. They showed different times.
‘I didn’t notice.’
What possible importance could that have?
‘You’ll notice, Monsieur Dandurand, that although three floors separate us from Mademoiselle Paucot’s apartment we can hear her piano here almost as clearly as in yours. Sound carries well in this building. That’s reassuring, because if my colleagues telephone me then we’ll be sure to hear them. Let’s go on. You were sitting where you are now? At this point we come to the envelope, which contained …’
‘Fifty-two thousand francs. The quarterly profits of the house in Rue d’Antin.’
‘Did she count the notes?’
‘She always counted them.’
‘And was she aware that you were keeping a record of the numbers?’
‘I never told her that. While she was sorting the thousand-franc notes ten by ten, I mentioned to her that Béziers has avoided replying to our letters for the last few weeks. The manager we installed there, who …’
Looking at Maigret, he felt sure that the inspector wasn’t really listening. Indeed, he got the impression that Maigret thought what he was saying was of no importance. He was smoking his pipe and looking at the pictures of the family, particularly those of the three children, and another photograph, the only one of its kind in the apartment, showing a shapely young woman of thirty with provocation in her eyes and in the curve of her throat: in fact a beautiful woman who must be Juliette.
‘Carry on, Monsieur Dandurand.’
‘It’s difficult, if not impossible, to supervise business of this kind. As you have already been told, in the case of any irregularities we can’t turn to the law. That explains why …’
Maigret had opened the dining-room door and then shut it again.
‘Go on, go on. Take no notice of me.’
This time he went right out of the sitting room, while Dandurand was talking in a voice that carried no conviction.
‘I offered to go to Béziers myself to question the residents in person, as the only way to establish the average of the receipts coming in, which …’
‘Yes, go on,’ the inspector’s distant voice insisted.
‘If you say so … I do remember pointing out to Madame Boynet that the winter season was not enough to explain such a drop in those receipts; they went down by a third last month …’
At last the inspector reappeared in the doorway, giving Monsieur Charles a curious look, as if wondering: what’s this man doing here, and why is he talking to himself?
‘Tell me, while you were discussing these matters with her, did you hear any noise in the apartment? And were you speaking at the same volume as now?’
‘No, I kept my voice very low, because Juliette was always afraid her niece might wake up in spite of the bromide. She didn’t trust the Hungarians next door either; she could hear their strident voices and their arguments all day. She had been trying to give them notice for several months, but they clung on for all they were worth.’
‘What did she do with the fifty-two thousand francs?’
‘She had them in her hand when she escorted me back to the door.’
‘In the envelope?’
‘I think she’d put them back in the envelope, yes.’
‘An ordinary envelope?’
‘A used envelope that I picked up from my desk. Wait a moment … it was yellow. Now what post did I receive that day? Yes … I’m almost sure it was a Crédit Lyonnais envelope, with my address typed on it.’
‘Did you ever see that envelope again?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
He couldn’t keep a touch of sarcasm out of his voice. Did Maigret think he was throwing him off balance by suddenly changing the subject like this?
‘Do you mind if I smoke, inspector?’
‘Come to think of it, when you visited your friend Juliette, did you happen to smoke here?’
‘Yes, often.’
‘What did you smoke?’
‘I see that you are better informed than I was aware, and if I didn’t have a clear conscience … But how can you know? You never met Juliette Boynet when she was alive, did you?’
This time, if he was not actually uneasy he would have admitted to being intrigued.
‘I mean, there isn’t an ashtray in this room. I’m sure I never left cigarette ends lying about, and as for the ashes from my pipe …’ He laughed nervously. ‘I confess that I don’t understand, inspector. I’ll tell you what the situation was, and then you will see why I’m surprised. Long ago, I came here with my pipe one day, and Juliette, who had her own ideas on such subjects, told me that she didn’t like to see a man smoking a pipe in front of a woman. Some nights we worked for several hours, so I brought cigarettes with me. To avoid leaving ash around, I put a piece of paper on this corner of the desk to act as an ashtray, and took it away with me when I left.’
Maigret was still looking at him with the same impersonal expression.
‘But how you know that is more than I can … Unless …’
‘Unless?’ repeated the inspector.
‘Unless there was someone hidden in the apartment, following everything we said and did. But that someone would still have had to be able to get in touch with you and tell you …’
‘Well, it hardly matters, does it? When Juliette Boynet went back to the door with you, she was holding the fifty-two banknotes … and you were using the envelope to take your cigarette ash away. I suppose Juliette locked the door after you?’
‘Yes, and she bolted it too.’
‘Did you go straight back to your own apartment? Did you meet anyone on the way? Or hear anything? I don’t suppose you know whether your old friend went to bed at once?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
They both pricked up their ears. The sound of a telephone ringing could be clearly heard, and Maigret hurried to the door, asking, ‘May I? I think that must be the phone call I’m expecting.’
Cécile is Dead Page 9
