Cécile is Dead

by Georges Simenon

  ‘Wait for me on the fifth-floor landing,’ the inspector told the other two police officers.

  He rang Dandurand’s bell. The door was opened by Berger, who hadn’t slept and whose eyelids were heavy with weariness. ‘I suppose you haven’t brought anything to eat?’ he asked.

  Monsieur Charles had taken off his detachable collar. He looked crumpled, like a man who has slept in his clothes, and he still wore his old kid slippers on his feet.

  ‘I assume …’ he began.

  ‘Don’t assume anything, Monsieur Dandurand, because you’d almost certainly be wrong. In accordance with the warrant signed by the examining magistrate this morning, I am arresting you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘No, I just feel it will make trouble for you.’

  ‘Do you want to say anything before we set off for La Santé?’

  ‘No, only that you’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘You still don’t know what you were doing yesterday in Juliette Boynet’s bedroom, while I was making a telephone call down here?’

  A bitter smile crossed Dandurand’s unshaven face.

  ‘You stay with him, Berger. Tell him to get dressed, and when he’s ready take him to the cells at La Santé for the formalities …’

  He abruptly swung round, grabbed a girl lurking behind him by her thin shoulders and growled, ‘As for you, Nouchi, if I catch you following me round the place again, I’ll …’

  ‘Ooh, what will you do to me?’ she asked in great excitement.

  ‘You’ll find out, and it won’t be funny. Off you go!’

  A little later he was opening the front door of the fifth-floor apartment.

  ‘This is the place concerned, boys … Careful, Monsieur Spencer, don’t go into this room.’

  ‘It’s all right, we’ve already taken all the fingerprints in the apartment,’ one of the photographers pointed out.

  ‘Yes, the day after the crime. And the only prints found in Juliette Boynet’s bedroom were her own and Cécile’s. No prints left by a man, neither Gérard nor the disreputable character we’ve just left. However, last night, while I was telephoning from his study downstairs, he went into that bedroom. I’m sure of it because I heard him, but I don’t know what he was doing there. He must have had very good reasons for risking something so compromising. I want you to find everything he touched … so get down to work! Now you understand why I told you not to go in there, Monsieur Spencer.’

  The specialists set up their equipment and began work. Hands in his pockets, Maigret was coming and going in the other rooms of the apartment.

  ‘Not a very entertaining story, is it?’ he commented. ‘An avaricious old woman, obsessed with making money. A young girl, or rather a woman not in her first youth and without many natural advantages … Come downstairs with me for a moment, will you?’

  They reached Monsieur Charles’ apartment just as the latter, in hat and overcoat, was about to leave with Inspector Berger.

  ‘Don’t worry about your possessions, Monsieur Dandurand. I’ll look after the key to your front door myself. By the way, I suppose it won’t take you long to find a lawyer to represent your interests, and he’ll soon turn up here.’

  So saying, he closed the door and went not into Dandurand’s study this time, but into the former lawyer’s bedroom.

  ‘Sit down, Monsieur Spencer … What do you hear?’

  ‘Yes, I understand … We can hear every word they say in the room above this one.’

  ‘Exactly! I don’t know how they construct modern buildings in America, but here they’re no more soundproof than a cigar box. Never mind what our colleagues are saying upstairs … concentrate on their footsteps. Try to follow their movements …’

  ‘I’d say … Hmm, yes, that’s much more difficult.’

  ‘My own opinion precisely. Ah, hear that? One of them has laid hands on a drawer … he’s opening it. But could you say what piece of furniture the drawer is in?’

  ‘That would be impossible.’

  ‘So we’ve established one thing. In his own apartment, Dandurand could hear everything being said overhead … He could follow, at least roughly, the comings and goings of visitors to Juliette Boynet. On the other hand, as for the details … I just hope that young idiot Gérard hasn’t thrown himself into the Seine!’

  ‘Because he’s innocent!’

  ‘I told you that I thought so … unfortunately, I’m not infallible. I also dwelt on the fact that an innocent man can often react as if he were guilty … I hope Berthe has stayed with his wife. She could be giving birth any moment now.’

  Above them, the Criminal Records men were dragging furniture over the floor.

  ‘If you were a miser, Monsieur Spencer …’

  ‘We don’t have any misers in America … Being such a young nation, we haven’t yet developed that fault, or shall we say that trait?’

  ‘Then imagine that you’re an old woman, an old Frenchwoman … You own millions, but you live as frugally as any ordinary pensioner …’

  ‘That’s quite difficult for me!’

  ‘Well, make an effort. Your only pleasure in life is counting the banknotes representing your profits. This problem has been haunting me for the last three days, because a man’s life depends on it. Depending on where exactly the money was invested, the name of the potential murderer changes …’

  ‘I suppose …’ the American began.

  ‘What do you suppose?’ asked Maigret, almost aggressively.

  ‘If I were … as you describe her … I’d want to have my money always within my reach.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought … But be careful. Although she wasn’t in good health, Juliette Boynet could still get around her apartment. She stayed in bed until about ten in the morning, when her niece came in with her breakfast and the morning paper …’

  ‘Perhaps the money was hidden in her bed? I believe it’s usual in France for people to sew their savings into their mattresses?’

  ‘Except that after ten in the morning, Juliette moved to the sitting room and stayed there until evening. These last few weeks, she had eight hundred thousand francs in thousand-franc notes in the apartment. That amount of paper would take up quite a lot of space. Follow me closely … only two people could know where the money was hidden. Her niece Cécile, who lived with the old lady … her aunt kept all this from her, but she might have found out by chance …’

  ‘I understand that Monsieur Dandurand was the old woman’s confidant?’

  ‘But not a close enough confidant for her to reveal her hiding-place to him, believe me! A woman like Juliette Boynet would be suspicious of her own guardian angel … However, as you confirm, sitting in this room, anyone can hear what’s going on overhead. Shall we go upstairs? If anyone calls me here we’ll hear the phone ringing.’

  It was so damp outside that the banisters on the staircase were sticky. One of the piano teacher’s pupils was going through her scales at length. The Hungarians were having an argument, and they could hear Nouchi’s piercing voice.

  ‘How’s it going, boys?’

  ‘This is remarkable, sir.’

  ‘What’s remarkable?’

  ‘Are you sure the man wasn’t wearing rubber gloves?’

  ‘I can prove that.’

  ‘He walked over the rug … but so far he doesn’t seem to have touched anything, except the door handle. The only fingerprints we’ve found are yours.’

  A strong flashlight was connected to the electric current. The photographic equipment changed the atmosphere of the room where Juliette Boynet had lived for so long.

  ‘She used a walking-stick, didn’t she?’ the American said suddenly.

  Maigret turned his head as abruptly as if an insect had stung him.

  ‘Wait a minute … The thing that …’

  What could the old woman have taken with her from her bedroom to the sitting room, from the sitting room to her bedroom, keeping it
with her during meals in the dining room? Her walking-stick, of course. But you can’t hide eight hundred thousand-franc notes in a walking-stick, even a hollow one!

  The inspector’s eyes went round the room again.

  ‘What about that?’ he suddenly asked, pointing to a small and very low piece of furniture, covered with old tapestry, a stool where Juliette Boynet could have rested her feet when she was sitting down. ‘Any prints there?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Maigret picked up the footstool and put it on the bed. His fingers slipped over the copper nails holding the tapestry cover in place, and he found that he could lift a kind of lid. In fact the footstool had been designed to contain hot coals, and under the lid there was a rectangular copper container.

  There was a silence. Everyone was looking at a package wrapped in old newspaper and lying inside the container.

  ‘Those eight hundred banknotes must be in there,’ said Maigret at last, relighting his pipe. ‘Look at that, Monsieur Spencer … And don’t mention this to your colleagues at the Institute of Criminology, because I’d be ashamed of myself! I looked inside the mattress, the base of the bed, I probed the walls, the floor, the chimney … and I didn’t stop to think that an old woman with swollen legs, dragging herself around with a walking-stick, might have herself been followed from room to room by that preposterous little footstool! Go carefully with that newspaper! Have a good look at it, will you?’

  And for ten minutes, oblivious to what was going on around him, Maigret applied himself to rewinding all the clocks, setting off a whole series of chimes.

  ‘Finished, sir,’ said one of his colleagues.

  ‘And the prints are on it, I expect?’

  ‘Yes, they are. We’ve counted eight hundred and ten notes.’

  ‘I need envelopes and sealing wax.’

  He saw the small fortune from the footstool safely sealed and telephoned the public prosecutor’s office to send a suitably responsible person to take charge of it.

  ‘Will you come with me, Monsieur Spencer?’ Out of doors, he turned up the collar of his overcoat. ‘We ought to have kept that taxi waiting for us. But believe it or not, the man I’m most afraid of at the Police Judiciaire is our accountant. I don’t know if they’re as fierce about expenses in the United States … While we wait for a tram, why don’t we have a drink in this bistro where the builders go for a snack? Oh, you’ve left your hat behind.’

  ‘I never wear a hat,’ said his companion.

  Maigret took a long look at the American inspector’s red hair, on which raindrops stood out like beads. There were certainly some things that were beyond his understanding!

  ‘I’ll have a calvados,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Can I get a glass of milk here?’

  Was that what gave this man of thirty-five a complexion as pink as the moist muzzle of a young calf?

  ‘In a large glass,’ said Maigret, addressing the bistro manager.

  ‘The milk?’

  ‘No, the calvados.’

  And Maigret patiently refilled his pipe. Had that cold fish Dandurand risked his head to put those eight hundred thousand francs back in the old woman’s little footstool?

  10.

  They left the registry office. A gap-toothed clerk had initially replied to Maigret’s questions by saying, in a bad-tempered tone, that he couldn’t give the information required. Then he noticed the inspector’s badge, and became so frantically eager to oblige that it took him twice as long as he should have needed to consult the voluminous registers.

  The local town hall was neither old nor modern, just ugly: ugly as a whole, in its proportions and its materials, ugly in all its details. Its staff were coming out just as Maigret and his American companion were going in, because twelve noon was striking. The large man of dishevelled appearance, with three chins and a paunch that preceded him, and whom everyone was keen to greet, must have been the mayor of Bourg-la-Reine.

  The inspector and his companion stopped to wait at the top of the short flight of steps, four or five in all, because a heavy shower was falling. The market, which stood in the shade of trees in the little square, was packing up. Stalls were being taken down. The muddy ground was littered with detritus. There was blood-red meat in the butcher’s shop opposite, where a large, pink woman sat at the till. Children were being let out of a nearby school, and they rushed away, shouting. Many of them wore shoes with wooden soles. A green and white bus was coming along.

  This wasn’t Paris now, or a little provincial town or a village. Maigret glanced at his American companion, and their eyes met. Spencer Oats obviously understood, for he gave a slight smile – a smile that was rather clouded, like the scene before them.

  ‘It’s not always much cheerier than this back home either,’ he murmured.

  The visit they had just paid to the town hall was on business that any inspector or indeed any officer of lower rank could have transacted. Maigret had wanted to know, first, how long Charles Dandurand had been living in Juliette’s apartment building.

  The answer was exactly fourteen years. Before that he had lived in furnished accommodation in Rue Delambre, near Boulevard Montparnasse.

  And Juliette’s husband, Boynet the building contractor, had died fourteen and a half years ago.

  Standing at the top of the steps down from the town hall, the two men waited for the worst of the rain to pass.

  ‘Do you know, Monsieur Spencer, why criminals would rather deal with us than with the lawyers?’

  ‘I guess I’m beginning to get some idea.’

  ‘And remember we can use brute force – not as often as it’s sometimes claimed, but more than an examining magistrate or a deputy public prosecutor … It’s just that in the course of investigations we’ve lived in the defendants’ own world. We’ve been to their homes, we know their customs, their families and friends. This morning I was drawing a distinction between the criminal before and after he commits a crime. Well, what we want to know about is his life before he steps outside the law. When we hand him over to the lawyers, that’s the end of him. He’s broken with his life as an ordinary man, and almost always it’s a final break. He’s a criminal, that’s all, and the lawyers treat him as such.’

  With almost no transition, Maigret sighed, ‘I’d give a good deal to know what Charles Dandurand was really doing in Juliette’s bedroom. Putting those banknotes back, or …? Oh, look, the rain is easing.’

  They made a dash for it, the inspector with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, the American as casually as if he were strolling along in bright sunlight.

  ‘Would you mind lunching in a bistro?’

  ‘I’d be delighted. Our men at the embassy, or those who have been showing me around so far, haven’t taken me anywhere but the big fancy restaurants yet.’

  They took the tram to Porte d’Orléans and in passing glanced at the building that resembled a slab of Neapolitan ice cream, its brickwork turning black in the rain.

  ‘The difficult part,’ said Maigret, ‘is putting yourself in their place, thinking and feeling like them. Another handicap for the judge, who lives in too neutral an atmosphere. My own home isn’t so very different from this place. Come in!’

  Turning into a small street, Maigret had pushed open the door of a very simple restaurant, with a metal counter, marble-topped tables and sawdust on the floor. A rubicund man with broken veins on his face, wearing a blue cotton apron, came over to shake Maigret’s hand.

  ‘It’s a long time since we saw you, Monsieur Maigret! I must tell my good lady. Mélanie! What can you offer Monsieur Maigret today?’

  Mélanie came hurrying out of the kitchen, stomach first, wiping her hands.

  ‘Oh, if only you’d phoned us first! Let’s see … there’s coq au vin, and I had some nice-looking ceps brought in this morning … does your friend like ceps?’

  There were only a few regular customers in the bistro. The windows were misted up, and you couldn�
�t see anything outside.

  ‘The usual Beaujolais, Monsieur Maigret?’

  Maigret went into a small phone kiosk, and the American, looking through the glass, saw that his face was grave and concerned.

  ‘They haven’t picked up that idiot Gérard yet,’ he said, returning to their table. ‘I’ll look in on his wife this evening.’

  ‘You said they were short of money in the household …’

  ‘We’ve done something about that, of course … Well, there’s a baby who I suppose will never know the circumstances in which it came into the world! … Why the hell did Charles Dandurand …’

  The American felt that nothing else Maigret said was of any importance. He was solely occupied with the problem of Dandurand.

  ‘Why Dandurand?’ Maigret mused.

  ‘If he killed the old woman …’ Spencer ventured to say.

  ‘If he killed the old woman I’m an imbecile and I’ll have to start my investigation all over again, Monsieur Spencer. First, why would he have killed her? She was worth more to him alive than dead … He knew he couldn’t inherit from her … And as for stealing the eight hundred thousand francs in her apartment, well, you saw for yourself that he did no such thing. And how could he have done it? She says goodbye. She escorts him back to the door. I’m sure that she locks it carefully. And she also bolts it, he says, and I believe him. She goes back to her bedroom. She undresses. She’s already taken off one stocking and she is sitting on her bed when … No, Monsieur Spencer, it wasn’t Dandurand who went back up, opened the door of her apartment and …

  ‘Yet four days later, almost in my presence, he doesn’t hesitate to let suspicion fall on him when he enters that bedroom … to do what?

  ‘And remember that the old woman’s papers – her receipts, her certificates of ownership – everything that was in the sitting-room desk and in effect is of no value at all to the murderer, since he can’t make any use of it without giving himself away – remember that all that has disappeared.