Francis was glancing at him furtively, looking anxious. Bob too was aware that there had been some change in his manner.
‘You seem surprised that Nora would have gone to a place like that.’
But the inspector, turning to Huguet, asked:
‘What’s the name of the club?’
‘You want to go and study the beatniks too? Let me think … the name isn’t very original. It must date from the time it was just a rundown café for dropouts. Ah yes, the Ace of Spades. That’s it. On the left as you go up the hill.’
Maigret drained his glass.
‘Keep my table, will you,’ he repeated.
A few minutes later, a taxi was taking him to Place de la Contrescarpe.
In the remains of the daylight, the club was lacklustre. There were just three long-haired male customers, and a girl in a man’s waistcoat and trousers who was smoking a small cigar. A man wearing a roll-neck sweater came out of the back room and stood behind the counter, looking suspicious.
‘What’ll you have?’
‘A beer,’ Maigret said automatically.
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’
‘No questions?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I know that if Detective Chief Inspector Maigret walks in here, it won’t be because he’s thirsty. So I’m waiting to see what it’s all about.’
The man, who was evidently ready to chat, poured himself a small glass.
‘Someone came in to see you on Wednesday night.’
‘Well, about a hundred someones, if you’ll permit me to correct you.’
‘I’m talking about a woman to whom you were talking for a long time.’
‘About half the people here were women, and I was talking, as you say, with plenty of them.’
‘Nora.’
‘Ah, now we’re getting to it. So?’
‘What was she doing here?’
‘What she comes to do about once a month.’
‘And that is?’
‘To check the accounts.’
‘Because …’
Maigret, with a jolt, had guessed the truth before the man told him.
‘Because she owns this place, yes, inspector. She doesn’t go round shouting it from the rooftops. I’m not sure that Papa Carus knows about it. But everyone’s got a right to put their money where they like, haven’t they?
‘Mind, I haven’t told you a thing. You can spin me some yarn and I won’t say yes or no. Even if you were to ask me whether she owns other nightclubs like this.’
Maigret looked at him inquiringly, and the man blinked to indicate yes.
‘Some people can sense the way the wind’s blowing,’ he ended, in a jocular tone. ‘It’s not always the ones who think they know best that make the smartest investments. If I had three places like this for just one year, I’d be off, I’d retire to the South of France.
‘So with ten of them, and that includes some in Pigalle and one on the Champs-Élysées …’
7.
When Maigret walked back into the Vieux-Pressoir, three tables had been put end to end and the group had started eating together. Carus, seeing him, stood up and came towards him, checked napkin in hand.
‘I hope you will give us the pleasure of joining us?’
‘Don’t be offended if I prefer to eat in my corner.’
‘Are you afraid to sit down at table with someone whom you might be obliged to arrest sooner or later?’
He was looking straight into Maigret’s eyes.
‘Because there’s every chance that whoever killed poor Sophie might be in here tonight, isn’t there? Well … As you wish … But let us at least persuade you to come and take an Armagnac with us afterwards.’
Bob had shown him to his table in the corner near the revolving door, and he had ordered the scallops and the duck à l’orange that Rose had recommended.
He could see them sideways on now, sitting in two rows. It was clear at a glance that Carus was the important person at the table. His behaviour, his attitude, his gestures, his voice and his expression were all those of a man who is aware of his value and pre-eminence.
Ricain had taken a seat opposite him with apparent reluctance, and joined in the conversation only grudgingly. Dramin was accompanied by a young woman Maigret hadn’t seen before: soberly dressed and wearing hardly any make-up, she made little impression, and Bob later told him she was a film editor.
Maki was eating a great deal, drinking hard and looking round at his companions, replying only with grunts to questions.
Huguet, the photographer, was the one who provided most of the rejoinders to the producer. He appeared to be in high spirits, and kept eyeing the rounded belly of the placid Jocelyne with the look of a satisfied owner.
It wasn’t possible at this distance to follow the conversation. But from stray words, exclamations or facial expressions, Maigret could more or less work out its gist.
‘We’ll soon see whose turn’s next,’ the photographer seemed to be saying, facetiously. And his gaze at that moment alighted on the inspector.
‘He’s watching us. Scrutinizing us. Now that he’s squeezed all he can out of Francis, he’ll attack someone else. If you pull a face like that, Dramin, it could be you.’
Lone diners, watching them from a distance, envied their good spirits. Carus had ordered champagne, and two bottles were chilling in ice-buckets. Bob in person came now and then to the table to refill the glasses.
Ricain was drinking a lot. He was the one who refilled his glass most often, and did not smile at any of the photographer’s jokes, which were not all in the best of taste.
‘Try to look natural, Francis. Don’t forget that the eye of God is watching you.’
This was aimed at Maigret. Were they more amusing when they met on other evenings?
Carus was doing his best to help Huguet lighten the atmosphere. Nora simply stared at each of them in turn with her cold gaze.
In fact, their dinner was a lugubrious affair; nobody was behaving naturally, in part perhaps because they all sensed Maigret’s presence.
‘I bet one day you’ll make a film about this, which our good friend Carus will produce. That’s the way all dramas end up.’
‘Can’t you just shut up?’
‘Oh sorry, I didn’t realize you …’
It was worse when silence fell around the table. In reality, they were not united by friendship. They had not chosen each other. Everyone had selfish reasons to be there. They all depended on Carus, didn’t they? Nora above all, who had managed to extract from him enough money to buy those nightclubs. She had no certainty that he would marry her one day, and preferred to take her own precautions.
Did he suspect as much? Did he believe he was loved for himself?
Probably not. Carus was a realist. He needed a companion, and for now she would do quite well. He was probably pleased that she looked striking enough to attract attention wherever they went.
‘There goes Carus with his girlfriend Nora. An odd couple.’
Why not? All the same, he had been Sophie’s lover, and was planning to make her a star.
But that presupposed getting rid of Nora. There had been others before her … As there would be others after her.
Dramin carted round with him unfinished screenplays to which Carus could give a green light. On condition he believed in Dramin’s talent.
Francis was in the same position, with the difference that he behaved in a less humble and patient manner, deliberately adopting an aggressive stance, especially when he had had a few drinks.
As for Maki, he seemed to be chewing over his private thoughts alone. His sculptures were not yet finding a market. While waiting for dealers to show some interest, he was decorating film sets, good or bad, for Carus or anyone else who needed them, and was glad when he didn’t have to pay for his own dinner, eating double quantities and ordering the most expensive dishes.
And th
en there was the photographer … Maigret found it harder to assess his physiognomy. At first sight, he did not count for very much. In almost every group of people who meet regularly there’s someone rather naive with big bright eyes, who likes to play the clown. His apparent candour allowed him to put his foot in it, letting slip some unpleasant truth that wouldn’t have been acceptable from anyone else.
Even his profession made him seem unimportant. They laughed at him and his wives who were always pregnant.
Rose, wiping her hands, came to see that everyone was satisfied, and accepted a glass of champagne without sitting down.
Bob would stroll over to Maigret from time to time.
‘They’re doing the best they can,’ he whispered with a conspiratorial air.
Sophie was missing. They all felt it. How did Sophie behave in these situations?
She might well have looked sulky, or shy, but she would have known all the time that she was the one in whom Carus, Mr Producer, the rich man of the gang, was interested. She would have met him that very afternoon in the little bachelor pad in Rue François-Ier.
‘You’ll have to be patient, little girl. I’ll take care of you.’
‘What about Nora?’
‘That won’t last much longer … I’m working on it … I’m ready to pay the price.’
‘And Francis?’
‘At first, he’ll be annoyed that you’re more successful than him and making more money. But he’ll get used to it. I’ll give him a film to direct. Then one day, when the time is right, you can ask him for a divorce.’
Was that what had happened? Carus, after all, needed the others too. It was by launching the careers of promising young people that he made most money. Being surrounded like this by a sort of court at the Vieux-Pressoir gave him a greater sense of his own importance than dining with promoters richer and more influential than himself.
A wink from Bob, who now brought two more bottles to the big table. Ricain, exasperated by the jokes the photographer was cracking, was replying in monosyllables. You could predict the moment when he would have had enough, and would get up to walk out. As yet, he did not dare to do so, biding his time impatiently.
It was true that one of these people had probably killed Sophie, and Maigret, feeling his head swim with the heat, looked at each of their faces.
Carus had been in Frankfurt on Wednesday night. That had been confirmed from Orly Airport. And Nora, between about ten and eleven, had been checking accounts in the frantic atmosphere of the Ace of Spades.
Maki? But why would Maki have killed her? He had slept with Sophie casually, because she expected it of him – as she expected it, apparently, from all their friends. It was a way of reassuring herself, proving she was attractive and not just another star-struck teenager.
Huguet? He already had three women. It was an obsession, it seemed, just as it was to get them pregnant. One wondered how he would manage to feed all these households.
Then there was Francis.
Maigret went over Ricain’s timetable again.
They’d returned to Rue Saint-Charles at ten. He needed money pressingly. He had hoped to find Carus at the Vieux-Pressoir, but Carus wasn’t there. Bob had protested at the size of the sum.
He’d left Sophie at home.
Why, when he usually dragged his wife around with him?
‘No!’ the photographer shouted. ‘Not here, Jocelyne. Don’t go to sleep!’ and he explained to everyone that since she was pregnant she kept falling asleep at any time, in any place.
‘Some women get a craving for pickles, or pigs’ trotters, or mock turtle soup. She just sleeps, and not only does she sleep, she snores.’
Maigret stopped listening, and went back to trying to reconstruct Ricain’s comings and goings until the moment the young man had stolen his wallet in Rue du Temple, on the platform of the bus.
Ricain who had not kept a centime of the money. Who had telephoned him to tell him that …
He packed his pipe and lit it. He too seemed to be dozing off in his corner, over his cup of coffee.
‘Won’t you come and take a nightcap with us, inspector?’
Carus again. Maigret decided to accept, to sit down for a moment with them.
‘So,’ Huguet joked. ‘Who are you going to arrest? It’s frightening enough to sense you over there, not missing any of our expressions. There are moments when you almost make me feel guilty myself.’
Ricain looked so unwell that no one was surprised when he left the table suddenly and headed for the toilet.
‘People ought to be issued with drinking licences,’ mused Maki, ‘same way we have driving licences.’
The sculptor must have acquired one of these licences himself, since he had drunk glass after glass and the only effect was to make his eyes glitter and his face turn brick red.
‘Always the same with him.’
‘Your health, Monsieur Maigret!’ Carus was saying, holding out his glass. ‘I was going to say, here’s to the success of your investigation, since we all want you to find out the truth as soon as possible.’
‘Except for one person,’ the photographer corrected him.
‘Except for one, perhaps … Unless it isn’t any of us.’
When Francis came back to the table, his eyes were red-rimmed, his face haggard. Bob, without being asked, brought him a glass of water.
‘Is that better?’
‘I can’t take my drink any more.’
He was avoiding Maigret’s eye.
‘I think I’ll be off to bed.’
‘You won’t wait for us?’
‘You’re forgetting I’ve hardly slept for three days.’
He seemed younger in his physical distress. He looked for all the world like a lanky teenager feeling sick after his first cigar, and ashamed of it.
‘Goodnight.’
They watched Carus stand up and follow Ricain to the door, speaking to him in a low voice. Then the producer sat down at the table which Maigret had occupied, pushed away the coffee-cup, and filled out a cheque, while Francis waited, looking elsewhere.
‘I couldn’t let him down. If I’d been in Paris on Wednesday, perhaps none of this would have happened. I’d have dined here. He could have asked me for the money for the rent, then he wouldn’t have had to leave Sophie on her own.’
Maigret gave a start, repeated the same sentence to himself mentally, and looked around them all again.
‘Would you excuse me? I’ll be leaving now.’
He needed to be outside, since he was beginning to feel stifled. Perhaps he too had had too much to drink? At any rate he did not finish the enormous glass of Armagnac.
Without any particular destination, hands in pockets, he walked along the pavements where some shop windows were still lit up. The people in the street were mainly couples who stopped to look at displays of washing machines and television sets. Young couples, dreaming and calculating.
‘A hundred francs a month, Louis.’
‘On top of over two hundred and fifty for the car.’
Francis and Sophie must have walked round here like this, arm in arm.
Did they dream of washing machines and television sets?
As for a car, they had one, a dilapidated old Triumph that Ricain had abandoned somewhere that famous Wednesday night. Had he gone back to pick it up?
With the cheque he had just received, he would be able to pay the rent. Did he plan on living alone in the apartment where his wife had been murdered?
Maigret crossed the boulevard. An old man was sleeping on a bench. The large modern apartment block reared up in front of him, about half its windows showing lights.
The other tenants must be out at the cinema or with friends, or perhaps lingering, like the group in the Vieux-Pressoir, at a restaurant table.
The air was still mild, but the large clouds piling up would soon obscure the full moon.
Maigret turned the corner of Rue Saint-Charles, and went inside the courtyard. A smal
l window with frosted glass was lit near Ricain’s door: that must be the window of the bathroom with the half-size bath.
Other doors, other lighted windows, both in the small ground-floor apartments and in the central building.
The courtyard was empty and silent, dustbins in their place, and a cat slinking furtively along the wall.
Now and then, a window would close and a light go out. The early-to-bed people. Then, on the fourth floor, a light went on. It was rather like the stars erratically twinkling or disappearing in the night sky.
He thought he recognized, on the fourth floor, behind a blind, the bulky silhouette of Jocelyne, and the photographer’s shock of hair.
Then his gaze moved down to the ground floor.
‘At about ten o’clock …’
He knew by heart the timetable of that night. The Huguets had dined at the Vieux-Pressoir. And since they had been alone, they had not stayed long. What time had they arrived home?
Ricain and Sophie must have opened their door and put the lights on at about ten. And then almost immediately, Francis had gone out.
Maigret could still see up above him silhouettes coming and going. Then there was only one, that of the photographer, who opened the window and looked up at the sky. Just as he was turning away, his gaze fell on the courtyard. He must have been able to see the Ricains’ bathroom light and, standing in the deserted space, Maigret’s silhouette, illuminated by the moon.
Maigret emptied his pipe by tapping it against his heel, and went inside the main building. Coming in from this direction, he did not need to go past the concierge’s lodge. He got into the lift, pressed the button for the fourth floor, then took a moment to find his way through the corridors.
When he knocked at the door, it was as if Huguet was waiting for him to call, since he opened it at once.
‘Ah, it’s you!’ he said with an odd smile. ‘My wife’s just going to bed. Do you want to come in, or would you prefer me to come outside with you?’
‘It might be better if we went downstairs.’
‘One moment. I’ll just tell her, and fetch my cigarettes.’
Through the door, it was possible to see an untidy sitting room, and the dress Jocelyne had been wearing that evening thrown across a chair.
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