‘That, in all likelihood, the third person was Count d’Anseval. If a shot was fired, if there really were three people in the room, if one of them was hit …’
Maigret glowed inwardly at Le Bret’s astonished expression.
‘Have you found out anything else?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘I thought you were shown around the entire house.’
‘Apart from the bedrooms above the stables and the garage.’
For a moment, and for the first time, the drama took on substance. Le Bret had accepted the possibility that a violent event had taken place − a murder, or an assault. And it had taken place in his world, among people who belonged to his social circle, people he met at his club, in the room of a young lady who was a close friend of his own wife.
It was strange to see his boss flummoxed, and Maigret was aware of the tension. No longer was there simply a problem to be resolved, but there was a human life, perhaps several human lives, at stake.
‘Mademoiselle Gendreau is very wealthy,’ sighed Le Bret at length, with regret. ‘She is probably the sole heiress to one of the five or six biggest fortunes in Paris.’
‘Probably?’
His superior knew more than he was letting on, but his society-gentleman self was clearly struggling to come to the aid of his chief-inspector self.
‘You see, Maigret, there are huge interests at stake, and Lise Gendreau has known all her life that she is at the centre of these. She never was an ordinary little girl. She always knew she was the Balthazar Coffee heiress, and furthermore that she was Hector Balthazar’s spiritual heiress.’
He added wistfully:
‘Poor girl.’
Then, becoming alert:
‘Are you certain of what you told me about d’Anseval?’
It was Le Bret the man of the world who was intrigued by this question and who, despite everything, was still incredulous.
‘He would often visit Mademoiselle Gendreau late at night, if not in her bedroom, then in her boudoir on the second floor.’
‘That’s different.’
Was this distinction between the boudoir and the bedroom enough to reassure him?
‘I’d like to ask you another question, if I may, sir. Has Mademoiselle Gendreau ever intended to marry? Is she interested in men? Do you think she might be what’s described as “frigid”?’
Le Bret couldn’t believe his ears. He stared dumbstruck at his young secretary who had suddenly come out with such language, moreover in connection with people he’d never even met. Le Bret’s expression was a mixture of reluctant admiration and slight concern, as if he had unexpectedly come face to face with a wizard.
‘There’s a lot of gossip about her. She has certainly turned down the most dazzling offers.’
‘Is she reputed to have lovers?’
The chief inspector was obviously lying when he replied:
‘I don’t know.’
Then he added sharply:
‘I confess that I don’t take the liberty of speculating on such matters where my wife’s friends are concerned. You see, my young friend …’
He was almost brusque, as he probably would have been had they been at his home on Boulevard de Courcelles, but he checked himself in time.
‘… our profession requires extreme caution and tact. I even wonder …’
Maigret felt a shiver run down his spine. He was going to be told to drop the case and to go back to being a pen-pusher at his black desk, copying statements into registers and writing out certificates of hardship.
For a few seconds, the sentence hung in the air. Fortunately, the police chief gained the upper hand over the society gentleman.
‘Listen to me: be very, very careful. If you run into any trouble, telephone me at home if necessary. I think I’ve already said that to you. Do you have my number?’
He wrote it down on a scrap of paper.
‘I asked you to come and see me this morning because I didn’t want to leave you floundering. I had no idea that you’d already made such good progress.’
However, he did not extend his hand. Maigret had become a police officer again, and a police officer who was about to bumble into a world where the visiting card ‘Monsieur and Madame Le Bret de Plouhinec’ alone had currency.
Maigret walked through the arch of Quai des Orfèvres just before midday. He passed the room whose walls were plastered with criminal record cards. He climbed up the wide, dusty staircase, not as the bearer of a message from the police station but in pursuit of his own ends.
He took in the doors along the corridor with the names of the detective chief inspectors on them, the glassed-in waiting room, an inspector who walked past escorting a man in handcuffs.
Now he was in an office whose open windows overlooked the Seine, an office that was a far cry from that of his neighbourhood police station. Men were sitting in front of telephones or report sheets; an inspector, one leg resting on his desk, was calmly smoking his pipe; the place was alive, buzzing, the atmosphere one of relaxed camaraderie.
‘Look, kid, you can always try going up to “Records” to see if there’s a file on him, but I don’t think there is, because he has never been sentenced, as far as I know.’
A sergeant in his forties treated him affably, as if he were a choirboy. This was the Drug Squad. These people knew Count d’Anseval’s milieu inside out.
‘Tell me, Vanel, how long is it since you’ve seen the count?’
‘Bob?’
‘Yes.’
‘The last time I bumped into him was at the races, and he was with Dédé.’
They explained:
‘Dédé’s the fellow who has a garage in Rue des Acacias. A garage where there are never more than one or two cars. Get it, kid?’
‘Cocaine?’
‘Most likely. And probably other little rackets on the side. Not to mention the women. The Count, as he’s called, is in it up to his neck. We could have picked him up for a couple of minor offences, but we prefer to keep an eye on him in the hope that eventually he’ll lead us to bigger fish.’
‘Do you have his most recent address?’
‘Don’t you think your boss is treading on our toes? Watch it, kid! Don’t put the wind up Bob. Not that we have any particular interest in him, but a depraved fellow like him can often be very useful to us. Is this case of yours a big one?’
‘I really need to find him.’
‘Have you got the address, Vanel?’
And a surly Vanel, with the contempt of those at Quai des Orfèvres for lowly local police officers, said:
‘Hôtel du Centre, Rue Brey. Just behind Étoile.’
‘When was he last there?’
‘Four days ago, I saw him at the café on the corner of Rue Brey with his tart.’
‘May I ask her name?’
‘Lucile. She’s easy to spot. She has a scar on her left cheek.’
A harassed inspector came in with a bundle of papers in his hand.
‘Tell me, boys—’
He stopped at the sight of an outsider in his inspectors’ office and looked inquiringly at his men.
‘The secretary from the Saint-Georges station.’
‘Ah!’
And that ‘ah!’ made Maigret long all the more fervently to be one of the ‘boys’ at Quai des Orfèvres. He was a nobody! Less than a nobody! No one paid him any further attention. Leaning towards the sergeant, the chief inspector was discussing a raid planned f
or the following night in the vicinity of Rue de La Roquette.
Since he wasn’t far from République, he decided to go home for lunch before going to the Étoile neighbourhood in search of the count or Lucile.
He was about to turn into Boulevard Richard-Lenoir when he spotted a couple in the brasserie sitting at a table set for two.
It was Justin Minard and Germaine. He had to hurry past, to avoid being waylaid by them. He had the feeling that the flautist had seen him and was pretending to look elsewhere. But Mademoiselle Gendreau’s maid tapped on the window and he had no option but to go inside.
‘I was worried you’d go to the lodging house and find no one there,’ said Germaine. ‘Have you been very busy?’
Minard looked shamefaced as he scrutinized the menu.
Germaine, on the other hand, was radiant. Her skin looked clearer, her cheeks pinker, her eyes brighter, and even her breasts were fuller.
‘Do you need us this afternoon? Because, if you don’t, I saw there’s a matinée at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu …’
They were both sitting on the imitation leather banquette, and Maigret noticed Germaine’s hand resting on the musician’s knee with a calm assurance.
The two men’s eyes eventually met. The flautist’s said: ‘I had no choice.’
And Maigret forced himself to keep a straight face.
He was going to have a cosy lunch with Madame Maigret, in their little dining room on the fourth floor from where they had a foreshortened view of the passers-by in the street.
Madame Maigret suddenly blurted out, while they were in the middle of talking about something else:
‘I bet she had him!’ without suspecting for a moment that the buxom girl might have had her husband too.
6.
A Little Family Party
It wasn’t until eight o’clock that evening, when it was dark and the avenues radiating from the Arc de Triomphe were outlined by the pearly glow from the gas lamps, that Maigret, who was beginning to lose hope, finally found what he was looking for.
He had a golden memory of his afternoon, Paris at its most beautiful, the spring air so mild and fragrant that people stopped to inhale it. Women had probably been going out without a jacket during the warmest hours for the past few days, but it was only now that he noticed. He felt as if he were witnessing a blossoming of flimsy dresses, and there were already daisies, poppies and cornflowers on their hats, while the men ventured out in boaters.
That afternoon he had combed a narrow sector between Étoile, Place des Ternes and Porte Maillot for hours on end. On turning the corner into Rue Brey, he ran into three tightly corseted women teetering in high-heeled boots who were not talking or standing together but would rush over as soon as a passing man appeared. Their home base was the hotel where the count lived. Just inside the doorway stood another woman, much fatter and more placid than the others, not bothering to cast her net wide.
Why was Maigret struck by the laundry opposite, where fresh-faced girls were ironing? Was it because of the contrast?
‘Is the count upstairs?’ he asked at the desk.
The receptionist looked him up and down. The people he was to meet that day would all have the same way of sizing him up, as if in slow motion, looking bored rather than contemptuous. The reluctant answer came:
‘Go up and see.’
He believed he had already cleared the first hurdle.
‘Can you tell me his room number?’
A hesitation. He had just let slip that he was not one of the count’s friends.
‘Thirty-two …’
He went up the stairs, where the smell of human life and cooking hung in the air. At the far end of the corridor, a chambermaid was collecting up bed sheets which still seemed damp with sweat. He knocked at a door in vain.
‘Is it to see Lucile?’ asked the maid from a distance.
‘No, the count.’
‘He’s not there. No one’s in.’
‘Do you happen to know where I might find him?’
The question must have sounded so ridiculous that she didn’t take the trouble to reply.
‘What about Lucile?’
‘Isn’t she at Le Coq?’
There again he had given himself away, instantly arousing suspicion. If he didn’t even know where to find Lucile, what was he doing there?
Le Coq was one of the two cafés on the corner of Avenue de Wagram with a wide terrace. A few lone women were sitting at tables, and Maigret suspected there was a slight difference between them and the women soliciting on the corner of Rue Brey. There was yet another type, the women who walked slowly up to Étoile, then back down again to Place des Ternes, pausing to look in the shop windows. Some of them could have been mistaken for wealthy women out for a stroll.
Maigret looked for a girl with a scar. He spoke to the waiter.
‘Is Lucile not here?’
A quick glance around the room.
‘I haven’t seen her today.’
‘Do you think she’ll be coming? Have you not seen the count either?’
‘He hasn’t been in for at least three days.’
He reached Rue des Acacias. The garage was still closed. The shoe-mender, chewing tobacco, also seemed to find Maigret’s questions pointless.
‘I think I saw him take the car out this morning.’
‘A grey car? A De Dion-Bouton?’
For the man chewing quid, a car was a car and he paid no attention to the model.
‘You don’t happen to know where I might find him?’
And the man sitting in his gloomy shop looked at him with something bordering on pity.
‘I just mend shoes …’
Maigret returned to Rue Brey, went upstairs and knocked at number 32, but there was no reply. For over an hour he continued his search, from Le Coq to Place des Ternes, turning his head to stare at every woman, looking for a face with a scar. They thought he was a punter who couldn’t make up his mind.
He felt the occasional twinge of anguish and berated himself for wasting his time, when something more important might be happening elsewhere. He had promised himself, if he had the leisure, to go and sniff around the offices of Balthazar Coffee, check whether Lise Gendreau was still at the Hôtel du Louvre, and he would also like to have kept an eye on the comings and goings in Rue Chaptal.
Why did he persist? He saw solemn-looking men enter the hotel in Rue Brey with their heads lowered, as if they were being pulled by an invisible leash. He saw men come out, even more shamefaced, their expressions anxious, who quickly strode over the empty space between them and the crowd, regaining their confidence as they melted into it. He saw women signalling to each other, sharing out silver coins.
He went into every bar. He decided to copy the flautist’s example and ordered strawberry cordial, but it tasted foul and at around five o’clock he went back to drinking beer.
‘Haven’t seen Dédé either, no. Are you supposed to be meeting him?’
From one end of the neighbourhood to the other, he came up against the same wall of silence. Eventually, at around seven o’clock, someone said to him:
‘Wasn’t he at the races?’
No sign of Lucile either. He ended up questioning the woman who looked least surly.
‘Most likely that she’s gone to the country.’
At first he was baffled.
‘Does she often go to the country?’
They looked at him and laughed.
‘She does, li
ke all women! So best to make the most of it and take a break …’
Three or four times he almost gave up. He had even wavered at the entrance to the Métro and descended several steps.
And now, just after half past seven, as he walked along staring at every woman he passed, he happened to look down the quiet Rue de Tilsit. Horse-drawn cabs and a chauffeur-driven car lined the kerb. At the very front stood a grey car, the model and registration number instantly familiar.
It was Dédé’s car. There was no one in it. A patrol officer was standing on the corner of the street.
‘I’m from the Saint-Georges district police station. I’d like you to do me a favour. If the owner of this car comes back and tries to drive off, could you detain him on some pretext?’
‘Do you have your ID?’
Even the police officers in this neighbourhood were suspicious! It was the hour when all the restaurants were full. Since Dédé wasn’t at Le Coq − he had just checked − he was probably eating somewhere else. Maigret went into a working-class eatery where people pushed past him and he was sent away with a flea in his ear:
‘Dédé? … Never heard of him …’
Neither had anyone heard of him in the brasserie close to the Salle Wagram concert hall.
Twice, Maigret went to check that the car was still there. He was tempted to puncture one of the tyres with a penknife as a precaution but was deterred by the presence of the patrol officer, who had many more years than him under his belt.
And now he was pushing open the door of a little Italian restaurant. He asked the usual question:
‘You wouldn’t happen to have seen the count?’
‘Bob? … No … Not yesterday, or today …’
‘What about Dédé?’
The room was small and fairly elegant, with red plush banquettes. At the back, a partition which almost reached the ceiling screened off a sort of private dining room from the main restaurant, and a man in a check suit appeared in the doorway. He had a ruddy face and very blond hair with a centre parting.
‘What is it?’ he asked, addressing not Maigret but the owner who was behind the bar.
Maigret's First Case Page 9
