‘That’s nothing to do with me.’
‘On the contrary. She often visited Vivien. I don’t know if you followed her, but the concierge recognized you and stated that, during the last two months, you visited her quite often.’
Maître Loiseau asked:
‘Is this concierge here?’
‘She died several years ago in her village where she had retired.’
‘In other words, she won’t be able to testify, which is very convenient for you. So far, you’ve presented us with two filthy, half-witted drunks, a man who lives off tips and now a dead woman. Who’s next, I wonder?’
‘All in good time,’ Maigret said, filling another pipe.
7.
The lawyer checked his watch, which presumably, like Maigret’s, showed 6.10. He was still a young man and was trying hard to seem important. He sprang to his feet.
‘Have you finished with my client, inspector?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m afraid I have to go, I have a meeting in my office in twenty minutes and I can’t miss it.’
Maigret made a vague gesture as if to say:
‘That’s up to you.’
Loiseau turned to Mahossier.
‘A word of advice. If you’re asked any more questions, don’t answer them. That’s your absolute right. Nobody can force you to talk.’
Mahossier didn’t react. He had grown more solemn, less aggressive. It was as if he were starting to realize the seriousness of his situation and, in addition, that his lawyer was only concerned with showing himself in his best light.
Maître Loiseau walked out with the same self-important air with which he had come in. As if in passing, Maigret murmured:
‘A word of advice. If you go to court, get a different lawyer. That one will only antagonize the magistrates and the jurors.’
He added:
‘It is indeed your right not to answer, but many people will see that as an indication, even evidence, of guilt. I won’t ask you any more questions, but you can always interrupt me if you so wish.’
He was observing Mahossier with a great deal of attention. It struck him that the man was less aggressive than he had been in La Baule or at the beginning of this interrogation. Rather, he now seemed like an overgrown schoolboy who keeps sulking even if he no longer wants to.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Piedbœuf was an excellent policeman who wasn’t determined to be right at any cost. By the way, Nina Lassave had a birthmark on her left cheek, didn’t she?’
‘Is this a trap?’
‘Not even that. The file my colleague put together is proof enough that you were the woman’s lover.’
‘The concierge is dead.’
‘But we still have her statements. There’s a transcript here from when she was brought face to face with you. You challenged her. “How did you find out my name?” You were convinced she wouldn’t be able to answer. But this is what she said: “One afternoon, I was in my lodge with a friend who comes from time to time to have something to eat. I can give you her name and address. After a while, this man (she pointed to you) came in through the arch, and we could see him clearly through the glazed door. She seemed surprised. ‘Oh, look! My painter. He’s the one who painted my kitchen and laid the carpet in my dining room. His name’s Louis Mahossier, and he works for a company on Boulevard des Batignolles.’” This friend, Lucile Gosset, was questioned and confirmed this conversation. In fact it was thanks to her that you were tracked down so quickly. About four in the afternoon on the day Nina was strangled, you were working in Rue Ballu, in Lucile Gosset’s apartment. She’d gone out shopping. You rushed over there …’
Mahossier was looking at him with a frown. It was as if there was something he couldn’t seize hold of, something he was trying to understand.
‘I could read you the concierge’s testimony. The postman brought an express letter for a tenant on the third floor and she went upstairs. On the way down, she passed you as you were going up to see Nina. Do you still deny it?’
There was no reply. As Maigret spoke, Louis Mahossier grew calmer, although he remained tense.
‘You were both crazy about her. I don’t know what she had that inspired such passion. Marcel Vivien left his wife and daughter for her, and yet she didn’t want to live with him. She never spent a whole night with him. Or with you, for that matter. I don’t know if it was a sign of her upbringing.’
Maigret was speaking in a slightly muted voice. Every now and again, he would mechanically turn the pages of the file he had in front of him.
‘To get back to the afternoon when Nina was strangled, Marcel Vivien did of course have an alibi, but there were gaps in it.’
Mahossier looked at Maigret with closer attention.
‘This morning, I came across a note written in the margins of the file by my colleague. Let me read it to you: “An elderly regular of the bistro in Boulevard de la Chapelle came forward of his own free will. He was clearly a little drunk. His name is Arthur Gilson, but he has the nickname Wooden Leg because he has a stiff leg that makes him walk as if he had an artificial leg. He claims that, during that afternoon, Marcel Vivien came into the bistro at about three thirty and had two cognacs one after the other. What made that particularly startling was that he usually only drank coffee. Again according to Arthur Gilson, Vivien then headed for Boulevard Rochechouart.”’
Maigret fell silent for a moment and looked intensely at Mahossier.
‘I should tell you immediately that none of the other people who were in the bistro confirmed that statement. Or rather, the owner admitted that the scene did take place, but the day after Nina died. One of them’s right and the other’s wrong. My colleague seems to have leaned towards the owner.’
Mahossier could not help asking:
‘And you?’
‘I’m tempted to believe Wooden Leg. He was old, but he had his wits about him. He’s dead now. All that’s left is this note by Chief Inspector Piedbœuf … Vivien had been Nina’s lover for more than six months. After cutting all ties with his family, he thought of her as his. She met you and gave herself to you while still having intimate relations with Vivien … Vivien didn’t often go to see her in the afternoon. It was the evenings he spent with her, although he also had lunch with her in a little restaurant.’
Mahossier’s features hardened again.
‘During the investigation, the concierge didn’t remember seeing him come in or go out. She was asked what she was doing at the time and she answered that she was knitting by the window and listening to the radio. Now, sitting by the window, it wouldn’t have been easy for her to see people coming in under the arch.’
‘Where does this lead you?’
‘To suspect Vivien of killing his girlfriend, who was also yours. Maybe he even saw you come out of the building? We’ll never know. The fact remains, he was furious, literally destroyed by the pain of it. He might not have come to Boulevard Rochechouart to kill her and he didn’t have any weapon with him. Maybe he only wanted to catch you with her. He found her lying naked on the bed. Who would she have undressed for if she wasn’t expecting him? As far as he was concerned, he had done it all for her. He was ashamed of having left his wife and daughter with nothing. And now she was cheating on him with the first man she found. I don’t know what they said to each other, but she couldn’t get him to calm down. She wasn’t afraid, we know that from the position she was found in. But he was in an agitated enough state to strangle her. Now his whole life had come to an end. He didn’t see how he could ever go back to Rue Caulaincourt, even to his workshop in Rue Lepic. Nothing mattered to him any more. He might not have been upset for the police to pin the crime on you.’
‘That’s pretty much what they did, what you yourself did at first. I always said I didn’t kill her.’
‘When did you find out that she was dead?’
‘Fifteen minutes later. I saw Vivien come running out and setting off in the direction of Place Blanch
e. I wanted to ask Nina what he was doing there. I went into the building, and it was as I was climbing the stairs that I passed the concierge. When I got to the apartment, the door was ajar. That struck me as suspicious. Two minutes later, I discovered the body. That was when I erased my fingerprints, wiping everything I’d touched, even in the last few days. In doing that, I must have wiped Vivien’s prints, too.’
‘Why didn’t you accuse him?’
‘Because I’d decided to punish him myself.’
Poor Torrence was struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of what was no longer a monologue from Maigret but a genuine conversation.
Maigret had found the weak spot, and Mahossier had lost his stiffness.
‘You were that much in love with her?’
‘She’s the only woman I’ve ever really loved.’
‘What about the woman you married?’
‘I like her a lot. She likes me, too, but I don’t think she’s ever really been in love with me.’
‘It all happened twenty years ago, Mahossier.’
‘I know. All the same, I think about her every day.’
‘Don’t you think that was true of Vivien, too? He was as much in love as you were, enough to commit murder. He didn’t try to make a new life for himself. He preferred to go downhill immediately. He became a tramp. A tramp you met by chance after twenty years …’
8.
Mahossier was silent, staring down at his shoes. His face had changed. He had lost his arrogance and become more human.
‘You had twenty good years.’
He glanced at Maigret, and on his thin lips there was a vague smile full of irony.
‘I didn’t kill her, it’s true. But I am the indirect cause of her death.’
‘You worked hard, you saved. You managed to establish yourself in your own right and did well in business. You have a nice, pretty wife. You live in a wonderful apartment and you own a villa in La Baule. And yet you risked all that to kill a man you hadn’t seen in twenty years, a man who, during that time, had become a wreck.’
‘I’d vowed to punish him.’
‘Why not leave that to the law?’
‘He’d have pleaded that it was a crime of passion and would have got away with a short sentence. By now, he’d have been free for a long time.’
‘Your lawyer will plead it was a crime of passion in your case, too.’
‘Right now, I don’t care. Just yesterday, I was determined to deny it, to defend myself.’
‘The evidence against you, whatever you think, is too strong.’
The telephone rang.
‘Ascan here, from the first arrondissement. Is everything all right?’
‘Everything’s fine. I’ve had Mahossier in my office for more than two hours now.’
‘Has he confessed?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’d have had to anyway, even if he didn’t want to. Some children who were playing on a patch of waste ground, next to the dilapidated building where Vivien had made his nest, just brought me a .32 calibre pistol. Three bullets are missing in the magazine. One of my men is on the way to the Police Judiciaire to hand it over to you.’
‘It’ll be an extra piece of evidence.’
‘Did he also kill Nina Lassave?’
‘No.’
‘Who was it? Vivien?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean that after twenty years Mahossier was still enough in love with Nina Lassave to avenge her?’
‘Yes. Thank you, Ascan. You’ve been an enormous help to me. In fact, it’s you and your men who’ve done most of the work in this case.’
‘That’s an exaggeration. I’ll leave you to your interview.’
Mahossier had tried to follow the conversation, but the words Maigret had uttered meant nothing without hearing what had been said at the other end of the line.
‘During these past twenty years, have you looked for him in Paris?’
‘Not systematically. I’d look at people in the street. I don’t know why, but I was sure I’d meet him one day … I did have dinner at Pharamond’s. I’d come to Les Halles on foot. The restaurant reminded me of old memories, of a time when Pharamond’s was the height of luxury, something well out of my reach. I went in and had dinner on my own at a table … My mother-in-law can’t stand me and never stops needling me. She resents the fact that I started out as a house painter. She also found out that I was born in Belleville and didn’t know my father.’
A few minutes later, old Joseph, the usher, knocked at the door.
‘An inspector from the first arrondissement is asking to see you. He has a package he needs to hand over to you personally.’
‘Show him in.’
The man was young and energetic.
‘I came as fast as I could, sir. I’ve been asked to give you this.’
And he held out his package, which was covered in parcel paper that had been used before and was all cracked. He looked curiously at Mahossier.
‘Do you still need me?’
‘Not for the moment. Thank you.’
When the inspector had left, Maigret opened the package.
‘Is this your gun?’
‘It certainly looks like it.’
‘You see? Even without your confession, we’d have got to the truth. We’ll take out the remaining bullets and compare them with the ones removed from Vivien’s chest. You were so afraid of being caught with this weapon in your pocket that you quickly got rid of it, throwing it on a piece of waste ground.’
Mahossier shrugged.
‘It’s true I gave a five-franc coin to a tramp. I also saw a fat woman who looked dead drunk. When I recognized Vivien unloading vegetables, all my anger came back and I rushed home to get my gun. I waited in the dark. It took a very long time, because another lorry arrived and he and others were hired to unload it.’
‘Your hate for him hadn’t faded?’
‘No. I had the feeling I was doing my duty.’
‘Towards Nina?’
‘Yes. What made it worse was that Vivien seemed at peace with himself. Wasn’t it his own choice to become a tramp? He looked for all the world as if it had brought him peace, and that put me in a rage.’
‘So you waited until three in the morning?’
‘Not quite. Half past two. I followed him when he headed for Impasse du Vieux-Four. The fat woman I’d noticed at Les Halles was lying in a doorway, apparently asleep, befuddled with wine. It never occurred to me she might pose a risk … Maître Loiseau will be furious about this confession, but I don’t care … I saw Vivien go inside the building. I went up the stairs right behind him. I heard him close the door. I sat on a step for almost half an hour.’
‘Did you want to find him asleep?’
‘No. I couldn’t make up my mind.’
‘What made it up for you in the end?’
‘Thinking about Nina, more specifically the little birthmark she had on her cheek which made her look so touching.’
‘Did he wake up?’
‘After the first bullet, he opened his eyes. He looked surprised. I don’t know if he recognized me.’
‘Did you say anything to him?’
‘No. I may even have been sorry I’d come, but it was too late. The only reason I fired two more shots was because I didn’t want him to suffer, believe it or not.’
‘You tried to get away with it.’
‘That’s right. I think it’s automatic. Vivien didn’t go telling the police he’d killed his girlfriend either.’
His face tensed as he uttered the words ‘girlfriend’. Then he shrugged again.
‘By the way, what became of Madame Vivien?’
‘She’s still living in the same building in Rue Caulaincourt, though in a smaller apartment. She’s a dressmaker. Apparently, she has quite a lot of customers.’
‘He had a daughter, too, didn’t he?’
‘She’s married with two children.’
‘And they don’t seem to
have suffered too much?’
Maigret preferred not to reply.
‘What are you going to do with me?’
‘You’ll be taken back to the cells. Tomorrow, you’ll be interrogated by the examining magistrate, who’ll probably sign an arrest warrant. Until the examination is over, I assume you’ll be kept in La Santé, after which it’s quite likely you’ll be detained in Fresnes until your trial.’
‘Will I be able to see my wife again?’
‘Not for a while.’
‘When will the newspapers announce my arrest?’
‘Tomorrow. In fact I think a reporter and a photographer are already waiting in the corridor.’
Maigret was a little weary. He, too, had suddenly relaxed and he had a slightly empty feeling. He spoke in muted tones. He didn’t seem triumphant and yet he was relieved.
He had two murderers instead of one. Was that what he had obscurely sought?
‘I’m going to make a request which I suppose you’ll have to deny. I don’t want my wife to find out what’s happening to me from the papers, let alone from a phone call from her mother or a friend. She must be having dinner. I’m sure she’ll be at the villa.’
‘What’s your telephone number?’
‘124.’
‘Hello, mademoiselle, can you get me 124 in La Baule? It’s urgent, yes.’
Now he was the one who was in a hurry to be free again. Three minutes later, he was put through.
‘The villa Les Pins Parasols?’
‘Yes.’
‘Madame Mahossier? Maigret here. I have your husband in my office. He’d like a few words with you.’
Maigret walked over to the window and stood there, puffing at his pipe.
‘Yes. I’m at the Police Judiciaire. Are you alone?’
‘With the maid.’
‘Listen to me carefully. This is going to be a shock.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes. I’ve just confessed. I couldn’t help it.’
Contrary to what he had expected, she remained calm.
‘Both of them?’
‘What do you mean?’
Maigret and the Loner Page 13
