Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse

  Georges Simenon

  * * *

  MAIGRET AND THE GOOD PEOPLE OF MONTPARNASSE

  Translated by ROS SCHWARTZ

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Follow Penguin

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. Between 1931 and 1972 he published seventy-five novels and twenty-eight short stories featuring Inspector Maigret.

  Simenon always resisted identifying himself with his famous literary character, but acknowledged that they shared an important characteristic:

  My motto, to the extent that I have one, has been noted often enough, and I’ve always conformed to it. It’s the one I’ve given to old Maigret, who resembles me in certain points … ‘Understand and judge not’.

  Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels.

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  MAIGRET AND THE GOOD PEOPLE OF MONTPARNASSE

  ‘Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth century’

  – John Banville

  ‘A brilliant writer’

  – India Knight

  ‘Intense atmosphere and resonant detail … make Simenon’s fiction remarkably like life’

  – Julian Barnes

  ‘A truly wonderful writer … marvellously readable – lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates’

  – Muriel Spark

  ‘Few writers have ever conveyed with such a sure touch, the bleakness of human life’

  – A. N. Wilson

  ‘Compelling, remorseless, brilliant’

  – John Gray

  ‘A writer of genius, one whose simplicity of language creates indelible images that the florid stylists of our own day can only dream of’

  – Daily Mail

  ‘The mysteries of the human personality are revealed in all their disconcerting complexity’

  – Anita Brookner

  ‘One of the greatest writers of our time’

  – The Sunday Times

  ‘I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov’

  – William Faulkner

  ‘One of the great psychological novelists of this century’

  – Independent

  ‘The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature’

  – André Gide

  ‘Simenon ought to be spoken of in the same breath as Camus, Beckett and Kafka’

  – Independent on Sunday

  1.

  Instead of groaning and fumbling for the telephone in the dark as he usually did when it rang in the middle of the night, Maigret gave a sigh of relief.

  Already he could only vaguely recall the dream from which he’d been so rudely awakened, but he knew it had been unpleasant: he’d been trying to explain to someone important, whose face he couldn’t see and who was extremely displeased with him, that it wasn’t his fault, that he needed to be shown patience, just a few days’ patience, because he was out of practice and he felt listless, ill at ease with himself. He needed to be trusted and it wouldn’t be long. Most of all, he needed not to be looked at in a disapproving or mocking way …

  ‘Hello …’

  As he pressed the receiver to his ear, Madame Maigret raised herself up on her elbow and switched on the bedside light.

  ‘Maigret?’ inquired a voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  He didn’t recognize the caller, even though it sounded familiar.

  ‘Saint-Hubert here …’

  A detective inspector of around his age, whom he’d known since his early days. They addressed one another by their surnames and remained quite formal. Saint-Hubert was tall and thin, auburn-haired and a little slow and solemn, keen to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

  ‘Have I woken you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My apologies. In any case, I think that Quai des Orfèvres will be in touch any minute to fill you in because I’ve alerted the public prosecutor’s office and the Police Judiciaire.’

  Sitting up now, Maigret reached for a pipe that he’d left on the bedside table to burn itself out when he’d gone to bed. He looked around for matches. Madame Maigret rose and went to fetch some from the mantelpiece. The air blowing in through the open window was still balmy; the city was studded with lights and the rumble of distant taxis could be heard.

  They had come home from their holiday five days earlier and this was the first time they’d been woken up so abruptly. For Maigret, it was a sort of coming back down to earth, a return to routine.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he muttered, drawing on his pipe while his wife held the lit match over the bowl.

  ‘I’m phoning from the apartment of Monsieur René Josselin, 37a, Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, next door to the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor … A body has just been discovered. I don’t know much about it because I only got here twenty minutes ago … Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes …’

  Madame Maigret went into the kitchen to make coffee and Maigret gave her a knowing wink.

  ‘The case looks disturbing; it is probably sensitive … That’s why I took the liberty of calling you … I was afraid they’d simply send one of the duty inspectors …’

  He chose his words carefully and Maigret guessed that he wasn’t alone in the room.

  ‘I knew you were on holiday recently.’

  ‘I returned last week.’

  It was Wednesday. Or rather Thursday, because the alarm clock on Madame Maigret’s bedside table showed ten past two. They had gone to the cinema, not so much to see the film, which was mediocre, but to get back into the habit of going out.

  ‘Do you intend to come?’

  ‘As soon as I’m dressed.’

  ‘I will be most grateful to you. I know the Josselins slightly. They’re not the sort of people one expects to be involved in a tragedy like this …’

  Even the smell of the tobacco had a professional quality to it: that of a pipe put out the previous evening and re-lit in the middle of the night when a man is woken up by an emergency. The aroma of coffee too was different from that of the morning coffee. And the smell of petrol, wafting in through the open window …

  For the past eight days, Maigret had felt as if he were floundering. This time, they had spent three entire weeks at Meung-sur-Loire without once hearing from the Police Judiciaire, without Maigret being summoned back to Paris on an urgent case, as had happened in previous years.

  They’d carried on doing up the house and working on the garden. Maigret had gone fishing and played belote with the locals and now he was finding it hard to get back to normal.

  So was Paris, it seemed. It was not raining; nor was there the usual post-holiday coolness. The big tourist buses continued to ferry foreigners in loud shirts through the streets and, although a lot of Parisians were back, others were still leaving the city by the trainload.

  The Police Judiciaire and the office appeared a little unreal, and Maigret sometimes wondered what he was doing there, as if real life was back on the banks of the Loire.

  It was probably this unease that was the cause of his dream, the details of which he was trying in vain to recollect. Madame Maigret came back from the kitchen with a cup of scalding coffee and immediately grasped that, far from being furious at being woken up so brutally, he was pleased.

  ‘Where is it?’
<
br />   ‘In Montparnasse … Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.’

  He had put on his shirt and trousers and was lacing up his shoes when the telephone rang again. This time, it was the Police Judiciaire.

  ‘Torrence here, chief … We’ve just been informed that—’

  ‘That a man has been killed in Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs.’

  ‘You know? Are you going over there?’

  ‘Who’s in the office?’

  ‘There’s Dupeu, who’s in the middle of questioning a suspect in the jewellery heist case, then Vacher … Hold on … Lapointe’s just come in—’

  ‘Tell him to go there and wait for me.’

  Janvier was on holiday. Lucas, back the previous day, hadn’t yet returned to work.

  ‘Shall I phone for a taxi?’ asked Madame Maigret a little later.

  In the street, he found a driver who knew him, and for once he was pleased.

  ‘Where to, inspector?’

  He gave the address and filled a fresh pipe. On arrival in Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, he spotted a little Police Judiciaire car and Lapointe standing on the pavement, smoking a cigarette and chatting with a police officer.

  ‘Third floor on the left,’ said the policeman.

  Maigret and Lapointe entered the well-maintained middle-class apartment building. There was a light in the lodge, and through the net curtain Maigret thought he recognized an inspector from the 6th arrondissement questioning the concierge.

  As soon as the lift stopped, a door opened and Saint-Hubert stepped forward to greet them.

  ‘The public prosecutor won’t be here for another half an hour … Come in … You will understand why I insisted on telephoning you …’

  They entered a spacious hallway, then Saint-Hubert pushed a half-open door and they found themselves in a peaceful drawing room where there was no one except for the body of a man slumped in a leather armchair. Tallish, quite portly, he was hunched up, his head lolling to one side and his eyes open.

  ‘I asked the family to withdraw to another room … Madame Josselin is being attended to by the family physician, Doctor Larue, who happens to be a friend of mine.’

  ‘Was she injured?’

  ‘No. She wasn’t here when the tragedy occurred. I’ll quickly put you in the picture.’

  ‘Who lives in the apartment? How many people?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘You mentioned the family …’

  ‘You’ll see … Monsieur and Madame Josselin have lived here on their own since their daughter got married. She married a young doctor, a paediatrician, Doctor Fabre, who is assistant to Professor Baron at the Hospital for Sick Children.’

  Lapointe took notes.

  ‘This evening, Madame Josselin and her daughter went to the Théâtre de la Madeleine—’

  ‘What about the husbands?’

  ‘René Josselin stayed on his own for a while.’

  ‘Didn’t he like the theatre?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think rather that he didn’t like going out in the evening.’

  ‘What was his occupation?’

  ‘For the past two years, he had none. He used to own a cardboard factory, in Rue du Saint-Gothard. He made cardboard boxes, especially luxury packaging for perfumers, for example. He sold his business, for health reasons …’

  ‘How old?’

  Sixty-five or sixty-six … So last night, he stayed in on his own … Then his son-in-law joined him, I don’t know at what time, and the two men played chess.’

  There was a chess board on a little table with the pieces positioned as if a game had been interrupted.

  Saint-Hubert spoke quietly, and people could be heard coming and going in other rooms whose doors were not fully closed.

  ‘When the two women came back from the theatre—’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘A quarter past midnight … As I was saying, when they came back, they found René Josselin just as you see him in here—’

  ‘How many bullets?’

  ‘Two … Both close to the heart.’

  ‘Didn’t the other residents hear anything?’

  ‘The next-door neighbours are still on holiday.’

  ‘Were you called straight away?’

  ‘No. First of all they telephoned Doctor Larue. He lives around the corner in Rue d’Assas and Josselin was in his care. That took a while and it was only at ten past one that I received a call from my station, which had just been informed. I quickly got dressed and made my way here … I only asked a few questions because it was difficult, given the state Madame Josselin is in—’

  ‘The son-in-law?’

  ‘He arrived shortly before you did.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘It was hard to reach him, but he was eventually found at the hospital where he had gone to see a sick child, a case of encephalitis, I believe—’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In there.’

  Saint-Hubert pointed to one of the doors. They could hear whispering.

  ‘From the little I gleaned, nothing has been stolen and we found no signs of a break-in. The Josselins are not aware of having any enemies … They are good people, who live an uneventful life.’

  There was a knock at the door. It was Ledent, a young forensic pathologist whom Maigret knew. He shook hands all round then set his bag down on a chest of drawers and opened it.

  ‘I received a phone call from the prosecutor’s office,’ he said. ‘The deputy public prosecutor’s on his way.’

  ‘I’d like to ask the young lady some questions,’ muttered Maigret whose eyes had swept the room several times.

  He understood Saint-Hubert’s feelings. The setting was not only elegant and comfortable, it exuded peace and quiet and family life. It was not a formal drawing room; it was a room that was pleasant to be in and where each piece of furniture had a purpose and a history.

  The huge tan leather armchair, for example, was obviously the one that René Josselin was in the habit of sitting in every evening, and, facing it, on the other side of the room, the television set was just within his field of vision.

  The grand piano had been played for years by a little girl whose portrait was on the wall and, next to another armchair not as deep as that of the paterfamilias, was a pretty, finely wrought Louis XV table.

  ‘Do you want me to call her in?’

  ‘I’d rather talk to her in another room.’

  Saint-Hubert knocked on a door, vanished for a moment, and came back to fetch Maigret, who caught a glimpse of a bedroom, and a man leaning over a woman lying on the bed.

  Another woman, younger, came over to Maigret and murmured:

  ‘If you’d like to follow me into my former bedroom …’

  A bedroom that was still that of a little girl, full of mementos, knick-knacks and photographs, as if her parents had wanted her, once married, to be able to come back and find her childhood room.

  ‘You are Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, aren’t you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You may smoke your pipe … My husband smokes cigarettes all day long, except at the bedsides of his young patients, of course.’

  She was wearing an elegant dress and had had her hair done before going to the theatre. Her hands plucked at a handkerchief.

  ‘Would you rather remain standing?’

  ‘Yes … You would too, wouldn’t you?’

  Unable to keep still, she paced up and down, not knowing where to rest her gaze.

  ‘I don’t know whether you can imagine the effect on us … You hear about murders every day through the papers, the wireless, but you don’t imagine for one minute that it can happen to you … Poor Papa!’

  ‘Were you very close to your father?’

  ‘He was an exceptionally generous man … I meant the world to him … I am his only child … You must find out what happened, Monsieur Maigret, and tell us … I can’t get out of my head that it is all a terrible mistake.’

 
‘Do you think the murderer could have come to the wrong floor?’

  She looked at him like someone grasping a lifeline but immediately shook her head.

  ‘It’s not possible … The lock wasn’t forced … My father must have opened the door …’

  Maigret called out:

  ‘Lapointe! … You can come in.’

  He introduced him and Lapointe blushed at finding himself in a girl’s room.

  ‘May I ask you a few questions? Whose idea was it to go to the theatre, yours or your mother’s?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. I think it was mother’s. She’s always the one who insists that I should go out. I have two children, the eldest is three, the baby ten months. When my husband isn’t at his surgery, where I don’t see him, he’s out and about, at the hospital or visiting his patients. He’s a man who devotes himself entirely to his work. So, occasionally, two or three times a month, mother telephones to invite me to go out with her.

  ‘This evening there was a play I wanted to see at—’

  ‘Was your husband not free?’

  ‘Not before nine thirty. That was too late. Besides, he doesn’t like the theatre.’

  ‘What time did you come here?’

  ‘At around eight thirty.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Boulevard Brune, near the Cité Universitaire.’

  ‘Did you take a taxi?’

  ‘No. My husband drove me here in his car. He had a gap between appointments.’

  ‘Did he come up?’

  ‘He dropped me off outside.’

  ‘Was he planning to pick you up afterwards?’

  ‘It was almost always the same when my mother and I went out. Paul – that’s my husband – would join my father as soon as he finished his visits and the pair of them played chess or watched television until our return.’

  ‘Is that what happened last night?’

  ‘From what he has just told me, yes. He arrived just after nine thirty. They started a game. Then my husband received a telephone call—’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘He hasn’t had the chance to tell me. He left, and when mother and I came upstairs later, we were met with the scene that you saw …’