Maigret Sets a Trap

by Georges Simenon

  ‘My men are following up a lead.’

  ‘A serious one?’

  ‘They are in possession of a material clue. It will inevitably lead us somewhere. It might take weeks, or it could take a couple of hours.’

  In the event, it was less than two hours.

  Lapointe, on reaching Rue des Petits-Champs, had first gone to a set of offices where the walls were covered with buttons of every shape and size. Purveyors of buttons since 1782 read a sign over the door, with the names of the two partners. And the collection on the walls was an exhibition of all the models of button manufactured since the company had been founded.

  After showing his police badge, Lapointe had asked:

  ‘Would it be possible to tell where this button comes from?’

  For him, for Maigret and for the man in the street, it was just a button like any other, but the clerk who examined it replied without hesitation:

  ‘It comes from Mullerbach’s in Colmar.’

  ‘Does Mullerbach have a Paris office?’

  ‘Yes, in this building, two floors up.’

  In fact, the entire building, as Lapointe and his colleague now realized, was occupied by button manufacturers.

  There was no Monsieur Mullerbach these days; but the son of the last Monsieur Mullerbach’s son-in-law was in charge. He received the two policemen courteously in his office, and turned the button over in his hands.

  ‘What is it exactly that you want to know?’

  ‘Did your firm make this button?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have a list of the tailors to whom you would have sold ones like this?’

  The industrialist pressed a bell and explained:

  ‘As you may know, the wholesale drapers change the colours and sometimes the weave of their fabrics every year. Before they put the new types on sale, they send up samples, so that we can make buttons to match. And those are sold directly to the tailors.’

  A young man who seemed to be wilting in the heat entered the room.

  ‘Monsieur Jeanfils, would you kindly find the reference number for this button and bring me the list of the tailors to whom we have sold ones like it?’

  Jeanfils went out without having opened his mouth. In his absence, his employer went on to explain to the policemen how sales of buttons were organized. Less than ten minutes later, there was a knock on the glass panel of the door. The same Jeanfils came in and placed the button on the desk with a typewritten sheet of paper.

  It was a list of about forty tailors: four in Lyon, two in Bordeaux, one in Lille, a few others in various French cities and the rest in Paris.

  ‘Here you are, gentlemen. I wish you luck.’

  They found themselves back in the street, its hubbub almost shocking after the offices, which had been as calm and quiet as a church sacristy.

  ‘What should we do?’ asked Broncard, who was working with Lapointe. ‘Start right away? I counted. There are twenty-eight in Paris. If we took a taxi …’

  ‘Do you know where Janvier went?’

  ‘Yes, into that big building over there, or rather into the offices through the courtyard.’

  ‘Wait here for him.’

  Lapointe went into a little bar with sawdust on the floor, ordered a white wine and Vichy water and shut himself in the phone booth. Maigret was still with Coméliau, so the operator put him straight through to the magistrate’s office.

  ‘Forty tailors in all,’ he explained. ‘Twenty-eight of them in Paris. Shall I make a start?’

  ‘Just take four or five names yourself, and dictate the rest to Lucas, he can send some men round.’

  He had hardly finished dictating the list when Janvier, Broncard and a fourth policeman entered the bar and waited for him at the counter. They were all three looking pleased with themselves. After a moment, Janvier opened the door of the booth.

  ‘Don’t hang up, I need to speak to him.’

  ‘It’s not the boss on the line now, it’s Lucas.’

  ‘Pass him on to me, even so.’

  For lack of sleep, they were all slightly feverish and their breath was hot, their eyes bright with fatigue.

  ‘That you, Lucas? Tell the boss it’s going well. Yes. Janvier here. We’ve hit the bull’s eye! It was really a stroke of luck, the man was wearing a suit made of English tweed. I’ll explain. I know how it works now. There are only about a dozen tailors up to now who’ve ordered this material. Many more received sample swatches. What they do is, they show the samples to the customer, and then if he orders a suit, they get hold of an appropriate length. So we’re hopeful we can be on to this quickly, unless the suit was made in England, which is pretty unlikely.’

  They split up outside the bar, each with two or three names on a piece of paper, and it was as if they were running a lottery between them. One of the four men would, in all likelihood, and perhaps this very morning, find out the name they had been after for six months.

  It was Lapointe who had drawn the winning ticket. He had taken the Left Bank, the area round Boulevard Saint-Germain, which he knew well because he lived there.

  The first tailor he visited, on Boulevard Saint-Michel, had indeed ordered a length of this precious suiting fabric. He was even able to show the inspector the suit he had made from it, since it hadn’t yet been delivered to the customer, and in fact was not quite finished. With one sleeve and the collar to complete, he was waiting for the customer to come for a fitting.

  The second was a little Polish tailor up on a third floor in Rue Vanneau. He had only one assistant. Lapointe found him sitting cross-legged on his table, wearing steel-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘Do you recognize this material?’

  Janvier had requested several samples from the wholesaler to share with his colleagues.

  ‘Yes, why? Would you like a suit made in it?’

  ‘I want the name of the customer for whom you made one.’

  ‘It was a while back.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Last autumn.’

  ‘You don’t remember the customer’s name?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Monsieur Moncin, Marcel.’

  ‘And who’s Monsieur Moncin?’

  ‘Well, he’s a very respectable gentleman, I’ve been making his suits for a few years now.’

  Lapointe was trembling, hardly able to believe it. The miracle was happening. The man they had been hunting so long, about whom so much printer’s ink had been spilled, to whom so many hours of police time had been devoted, suddenly had a name. He was going to have an address, a civil identity, and before long, no doubt, he would have taken physical shape.

  ‘Does he live nearby?’

  ‘Not far from here, Boulevard Saint-Germain, near Solférino Métro station.’

  ‘You know him well, do you?’

  ‘Like all my customers. He’s very polite, a charming man.’

  ‘Has he been to see you recently?’

  ‘Last time was in November, about an overcoat, not long after I made the suit for him.’

  ‘Do you have his exact address?’

  The little tailor looked through a notebook where names and addresses were pencilled in, alongside numbers indicating the prices of clothes no doubt, which he ticked off in red when they had been paid for.

  ‘228a.’

  ‘Do you know whether he’s married?’

  ‘His wife’s been in with him several times. She always comes when he has to make up his mind about something.’

  ‘Is she young?’

  ‘About thirty, I should think. She’s very distinguished, a real lady.’

  Lapointe could not control the trembling which had now taken over his entire body. It was verging on panic. So close to the goal, he was afraid there would be some sudden hitch that would send everything into doubt again.

  ‘Thank you. I may be back to see you again.’

  He had forgotten to ask what Marcel Moncin’s professi
on was, as he rushed down the stairs and hurried along Boulevard Saint-Germain, where the building with the number 228a now appeared fascinating to him. And yet it was just a nineteenth-century apartment building, in the same style as all the neighbouring blocks on the boulevard, with wrought-iron balconies. The street door stood open on to a beige-painted corridor, at the end of which a lift was visible. The concierge’s lodge was on the right.

  He felt an almost painful desire to go inside, to ask the concierge for information, then go up to Moncin’s apartment, to finish with the famous killer once and for all, on his own. But he knew he had no right to do such a thing.

  Just opposite the Métro entrance, a uniformed policeman was on duty, and Lapointe went over and identified himself.

  ‘Can you keep an eye on that building for a few minutes? I need to call headquarters.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing. Or no, rather, if a man aged about thirty, slim, fairish hair, happens to come out, can you find some excuse to hold on to him, ask him for his identity papers, anything you can think of.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘His name’s Marcel Moncin.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  Lapointe preferred not to make it clear that most probably he was the Montmartre murderer. A few moments later, he was in another café, telephoning.

  ‘Is that Quai des Orfèvres? Get me Detective Chief Inspector Maigret right away. Lapointe speaking.’

  He was so feverish that he was stuttering.

  ‘Boss, is that you? La-Lapointe here. Yes. Found him … How? … Yes … Name and address. I’m standing right opposite where he lives.’

  He was suddenly struck by the idea that other suits had been made from the same fabric, and that perhaps his man wasn’t the right one.

  ‘Janvier hasn’t phoned, has he? Yes? What did he say?’

  They had tracked down three other suits, but none of the men corresponded at all to the description given by Marthe Jusserand.

  ‘I’m phoning from Boulevard Saint-Germain. I’ve got an officer watching the door. Yes, yes … I’ll wait for you … Just a minute, I’ll check the name of this café.’

  He came out of the booth, and read backwards the name enamelled on the outside window.

  ‘Café Solférino.’

  Maigret had told him to stay there without showing himself. Less than a quarter of an hour later, as he stood at the counter in front of another white wine and Vichy water, he recognized a number of small police cars parking at different places.

  From one of them, Maigret in person got out, and to Lapointe he looked more massive and heavily built than ever.

  ‘It was so easy, boss, that I hardly dare believe it.’

  Was Maigret as nervous as he was himself?

  If so, it didn’t show. Or rather, for those who knew him well, it betrayed itself in his grumpy and dogged demeanour.

  ‘What are you drinking?’

  ‘A white wine and Vichy water.’

  Maigret pulled a face.

  ‘Do you have draught beer here?’

  ‘Of course, Monsieur Maigret!’

  ‘You know me?’

  ‘I’ve seen your picture in the papers plenty of times. And last year, when you were investigating something in the ministry offices across the road, you came in for a drink now and then.’

  He drank up his beer.

  ‘Come along.’

  During that time, a number of precautions had been taken, on a lesser scale than the night before, but no less effective. Two inspectors had gone up to the top floor of the building. Others were on the pavement outside the house, others still on the opposite side of the road and at the corner, and a radio car was nearby.

  There was probably no need. Killers of this kind rarely put up any defence, certainly not an armed one.

  ‘Shall I come with you?’

  Maigret nodded and they both went towards the concierge’s lodge. It was a comfortable, respectable-looking one, with a small sitting room divided from the kitchen by a red velvet curtain. The concierge, a woman of about fifty, was calm and smiling.

  ‘Who did you want, gentlemen?’

  ‘Monsieur Moncin, please?’

  ‘Second floor left.’

  ‘You don’t know whether he’s at home, do you?’

  ‘He’s probably there, because I haven’t seen him go out.’

  ‘Is Madame Moncin there as well?’

  ‘She came back from shopping about half an hour ago.’

  Maigret couldn’t help thinking of his conversation with Professor Tissot at the Pardons’. This building was quiet and comfortable, and its old-fashioned atmosphere, its style dating from the previous century, had something reassuring about it. The lift, well maintained, with gleaming brass fittings, was waiting for them, but they preferred to go up on foot, treading on the thick crimson stair carpet.

  Most of the doormats in front of the dark wooden doors bore initials picked out in red, and all the bell-pushes were polished; there was no sound to be heard from inside the apartments, and no smell of cooking in the stairwell.

  One of the doors on the first floor carried a brass plate indicating that the occupant was a specialist in chest diseases.

  On the second floor left, a similar brass plate carried the inscription in more stylish modern script:

  Marcel Moncin

  Architect-Interior Decorator

  The two men stopped and looked at each other, and Lapointe had the sense that Maigret was as keyed up as himself. It was the chief inspector who reached out to press the bell. They couldn’t hear it ring, so it must have sounded deep inside the apartment. A time that seemed rather long elapsed before finally the door opened, and a maidservant in a white apron, who could not be as much as twenty years old, stared at them in amazement and asked:

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is Monsieur Moncin at home?’

  She seemed embarrassed and stammered:

  ‘I … I don’t know …’

  So he was there.

  ‘If you wait a moment, I’ll go and ask madame.’

  She had no need to go far. A woman who was still young appeared at the end of the corridor. On returning from shopping, she must have changed into a light peignoir because of the heat.

  ‘What is it, Odile?’

  ‘Two gentlemen who want to see monsieur, madame.’

  She came forward, pulling the sides of the peignoir together and looking Maigret in the eye, as if he reminded her of someone.

  ‘And you wanted …?’ she asked, trying to understand.

  ‘Is your husband at home?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘That means he is.’

  She blushed slightly.

  ‘Yes. But he’s asleep.’

  ‘I’m afraid I must ask you to wake him.’

  She hesitated, then said quietly:

  ‘To whom do I have the honour …’

  ‘Police Judiciaire.’

  ‘It’s Chief Inspector Maigret, isn’t it? I thought I recognized you …’

  Maigret had unobtrusively moved forwards, and was now standing in the entrance hall.

  ‘Would you wake your husband, please? I suppose he must have got in late last night?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Does he usually sleep until eleven in the morning?’

  She smiled.

  ‘Quite often. He likes to work in the evenings, and it can go on late into the night. He’s a creative person, an artist.’

  ‘So he wasn’t out last night?’

  ‘Not as far as I know. If you would wait a little while in the drawing room, I’ll go and get him up.’

  She had opened the glass door into a drawing room which was furnished in a modern style, rather unexpected in this older building, but not aggressively so. Maigret thought that he could quite well live with a decor like this. Only the paintings on the walls, of which he made nothing at all, were displeasing.

 
; Lapointe stayed on his feet and kept his eyes on the main door of the apartment. Not that he needed to, since by now all the exits were guarded. The young woman, who had departed with a swish of silk, was away only a few minutes and returned – not without having combed her hair.

  ‘He’ll be here in a moment. Marcel is rather shy and I tease him about it, but he doesn’t like to meet people without being properly dressed.’

  ‘You have separate bedrooms?’

  She looked a little shocked at this, but replied simply:

  ‘Like many married couples, surely.’

  It was after all almost standard, in a certain social milieu. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. What he was trying to discover was whether she was play-acting, whether she knew anything, or whether on the contrary she was genuinely wondering what possible connection there could be between Chief Inspector Maigret and her husband.

  ‘Your husband works at home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She went to open a side door which gave on to a quite spacious office, its two windows looking down on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Inside they glimpsed drawing boards, rolls of paper, and some curious models made of plaster and wire, reminiscent of stage sets.

  ‘He works hard, does he?’

  ‘Too hard for his health. He’s never been strong. We should be away in the mountains, like other years, but he took on a commission that will prevent us from taking a holiday.’

  He had rarely encountered a woman so calm and in control of herself. Shouldn’t she be deeply alarmed – when the papers were full of stories about the murderer, and everyone knew Maigret was leading the investigation – to have him turn up on her doorstep? She was merely looking at him as if she were simply curious to meet such a famous man close up.

  ‘I’ll go and see if he’s nearly ready.’

  Maigret, sitting in an armchair, slowly filled his pipe, then lit it and exchanged a further glance with Lapointe, who could hardly keep still.

  When the door through which Madame Moncin had vanished opened again, they saw not her but a man who looked so young as to suggest their visit was a complete misunderstanding.

  He was wearing indoor casual clothes of a light beige colour, which showed off his fair hair, delicate fine skin and pale blue eyes.

  ‘My apologies, gentlemen, for keeping you waiting.’