Maigret and the Gangsters

  MAIGRET and the GANGSTERS

  Maigret, Lognon et les gangsters.

  the 67th episode of the maigret saga

  Georges Simenon

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  An STM digital back-up edition 1.0

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  Contents

  |1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|

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  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data:

  Simenon, Georges, 1903-Maigret and the gangsters.

  Translation of: Maigret, Lognon et les gangsters; tr. by Louise Varèse

  Originally published: San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.

  . Large type books. I. Title.

  [PQ2637. I53M26713 1987] 843'. 912 86-30064

  ISBN 0-89621-778-7 (alk. paper)

  Copyright ® 1952 by Georges Simenon.

  English translation copyright 1954 by Georges Simenon.

  Copyright renewed 1982 by Georges Simenon.

  All rights reserved.

  Large Print edition available in North America by arrangement with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

  Large Print edition available in the British Commonwealth by arrangement with Hamish Hamilton Ltd., London.

  Cover design by Armen Kojoyian.

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  chapter one

  ^ »

  All right… All right… Yes, of course… Certainly… I’ll do my best… That’s right… Well then, good-by… What? I said good-by… Quite all right… Good-by…”

  For the tenth time at least — he hadn’t kept count — Maigret hung up the receiver, relighted his pipe, gave a reproachful glance at the prolonged cold rain outside his window, and, picking up his pen, bent over the report begun more than an hour ago and still with less than half a page written.

  Actually, as he began writing, he was thinking of something else; he was thinking of the rain, of that particular kind of rain that is the forerunner of the real winter cold and that has a way of creeping down your neck, into your shoes, of falling in great drops off the brim of your hat, a cold-in-the-head rain, dirty and dreary, that makes people want to stay at home, where you see them looking like ghosts behind their windows.

  Is it boredom that impels them to telephone at such times? Of the eight or ten calls, almost in succession, there hadn’t been three that were of the least use. And the bell was ringing again. Maigret looked at the instrument as if tempted to demolish it with his fist, finally barking:

  “Hello?”

  “Madame Lognon insists on speaking to you personally.”

  “Madame who?”

  “Lognon.”

  On such a foul day and with his nerves already on edge, it seemed like some kind of practical joke, suddenly hearing on the wire the name of the man they had nicknamed Old Grouch, the most dismal man in the Paris police, so proverbially unlucky that some of the men insisted he had the evil eye.

  And it wasn’t even Lognon on the phone, but Madame Lognon. Maigret had met her only once, at their apartment on Place Constantin-Pecqueur in Montmartre. Since then, he no longer resented the man, although he still avoided him as much as possible, but pitied him from the bottom of his heart.

  “Put her on… Hello! Madame Lognon?”

  “Excuse me for disturbing you, Superintendent…”

  She pronounced each syllable with affected care, like people do who want to prove they have had a good education. Maigret noticed that the date was Thursday, the sixteenth of November. The black marble clock on the mantelpiece pointed to eleven o’clock in the morning.

  “I should never have taken the liberty of insisting upon speaking to you personally if I had not had an imperative reason…”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You know us, Superintendent, my husband and myself. You know that…”

  “Yes, madam.”

  “I simply must see you, Superintendent. Terrible things are happening, and I am frightened. If it weren’t for my health, I would rush right over to the Quai des Orfèvres. But, as you know, for years now I’ve been confined to this fifth floor of mine.”

  “Am I to understand that you would like me to come there?”

  “Please do, Monsieur Maigret.”

  It was atrocious. She had said it politely but firmly.

  “Your husband isn’t at home?”

  “He has disappeared.”

  “What! Lognon has disappeared? Since when?”

  “I don’t know. He is not at his office, and no one knows where he is. The gangsters were here again this morning.”

  “The what?”

  “The gangsters. I will tell you all about it, even if it makes Lognon furious. I am too frightened.”

  “You mean to say that some men entered your apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Broke in?”

  “Yes.”

  “While you were there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did they take anything?”

  “Some papers perhaps. I haven’t looked.”

  “Did it happen this morning?”

  “Half an hour ago. But the other two had already been here, the day before yesterday.”

  “What was your husband’s reaction?”

  “I haven’t seen him since.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Maigret still didn’t believe it. Not really. He scratched his head, chose two pipes, which he slipped into his pocket, and opened the door to the inspectors’ room.

  “Anyone heard anything of Lognon lately?”

  The name invariably raised a smile. No. No one had heard anything. Inspector Lognon, despite his fervent desire, did not belong to the Crime Squad on Quai des Orfèvres, but to the second district of the Ninth Arrondissement, and his office was at the police station on Rue la Rochefoucauld.

  “If anyone asks for me, I’ll be back in an hour. Is there a car outside?”

  He slipped into his thick overcoat, found a small police car in the courtyard, gave the address on Place Constantin-Pecqueur. It was about as cheerful on the streets as under the glass dome of the Gare du Nord, and people walked along stoically, their legs drenched by the jets of water the cars kept swishing over the sidewalks.

  It was an ordinary-looking apartment house, about a century old, with no elevator. Sighing, Maigret climbed the five flights; a door opened before he had time to knock; Madame Lognon, with red eyes and nose, ushered him into the apartment, murmuring:

  “I am so grateful to you for coming! If you only knew how my poor husband admires you!”

  It wasn’t true. Lognon detested him. Lognon detested everyone who was lucky enough to work at the Quai des Orfèvres, all the inspectors, everyone who was a grade above him. He detested everyone older than he because they were older, and the young ones because they were younger. He…

  “Sit down, Superintendent…”

  She was short and thin, with untidy hair, and she was wearing a flannel dressing gown of a hideous shade of mauve. She had deep circles under her eyes, pinched nostrils, and she kept pressing her hand to her left side, like someone suffering from heart trouble.

  “I thought it preferable not to touch anything, so that you could see for yourself…”

  The apartment was tiny: a dining room, living room, bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom, everything on a diminutive scale, with doors that couldn’t quite open fully because of the furniture. A black cat was curled up on the bed.

  Madame Lognon had taken Maigret into the dining room, and it was obvious that the living room was never used. There was no silver in the open drawers of the sideboard, only papers, notebooks, and photographs, which had been left in w
ild disorder; letters were scattered over the floor.

  “I think,” he said, hesitating to light his pipe, “you’d better begin at the beginning. On the phone you spoke of gangsters.”

  Before answering, she said in a tone of long-suffering resignation:

  “You may smoke your pipe if you like.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well, you see, it was Tuesday morning…”

  “In other words, day before yesterday?”

  “Yes. Lognon is on night duty this week. Tuesday morning he came home about six o’clock, as usual. But, instead of going to bed as soon as he had eaten, he kept pacing up and down until it made me fairly dizzy.”

  “Did he seem worried?”

  “You know how terribly conscientious he is, Superintendent. I keep telling him that he is much too conscientious, that he will ruin his health, and that no one will thank him for it. You must excuse me for speaking so frankly, but you will have to admit that he has never been treated as he deserves. He’s a man who thinks of nothing but his duty, and frets himself to death…”

  “So on Tuesday morning…”

  “At eight o’clock he went out to do the marketing. I am ashamed to be nothing but a helpless invalid, almost good for nothing, but it isn’t my fault. The doctor forbids me to climb the stairs, and so of course Lognon has to buy what we need. It’s no work for a man like him, I know. Every time, I…”

  “Tuesday morning?”

  “He did the shopping. Then he told me that he had to go back to his office, that he probably wouldn’t be long and would sleep in the afternoon.”

  “He didn’t say anything about this case he’s working on?”

  “He never talks about his work. If I’m unfortunate enough to ask him a question, he always says it’s a professional secret.”

  “He hasn’t been home since?”

  “About eleven o’clock, yes.”

  “The same day?”

  “Yes. Tuesday about eleven o’clock in the morning.”

  “Was he still nervous?”

  “I don’t know if he was nervous or if it was his cold, since he’d caught a head cold. I insisted he take care of it. He replied that he would later, when he had time, that he had to go out again, but would be home before dinner.”

  “Did he come home?”

  “Oh, but wait! My God! I’ve just thought! What if I never see him again! And to think of the way I reproached him. I said he never worried about his wife but only about his work…”

  Resigned, Maigret waited, uncomfortable on a flimsy straight-backed chair, not daring to tilt back for fear of breaking it.

  “It was perhaps half an hour after he left — not even that, toward one o’clock — that I heard footsteps on the stairs. I thought it was the woman on the sixth floor, a person who, between ourselves…”

  “Yes. Footsteps on the stairs…”

  “They stopped on my landing. I had just gone back to bed, as the doctor ordered me to do after meals. Someone knocked at the door, and I didn’t answer. Lognon has warned me never to answer unless people tell their names. No one can work the way my husband does without making enemies, can they? I was surprised when I heard the door open, then steps in the hall, then in the dining room. There were two of them, two men looking into my bedroom, staring at me still there in bed.”

  “Did you get a good look at them?”

  “I ordered them to leave, threatened them with the police; I even reached for the telephone, which was on the table by my bed.”

  “And then?”

  “One of them, the little one, pointed a revolver at me and said something in a language I didn’t understand, probably English.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “I don’t know how to describe them. They were very well dressed. They were both smoking cigarettes. They kept their hats on. They seemed surprised not to find something or somebody.

  “ ‘If it’s my husband you’re looking for… ’ I began. But they didn’t listen. The tall one went all over the apartment while the other stayed watching me. I remember they looked under the bed and in the closets.”

  “Didn’t they go through the drawers?”

  “Not those two, no. They didn’t stay more than five minutes, didn’t ask any questions, and calmly left as if their visit had been perfectly natural. Of course I rushed over to the window, and I saw them arguing down on the sidewalk near a big black automobile. The tall one got in, and the other walked to the corner of Rue Caulaincourt. I think he went into the bar. I phoned my husband’s office right away.”

  “Was he there?”

  “Yes. He had just come in. I told him what had happened.”

  “Did he seem surprised?”

  “It’s hard to say. He’s always queer on the telephone.”

  “Did he ask you to describe the two men?”

  “Yes, and I did.”

  “Will you describe them again.”

  “They were both very dark, like Italians, but I’m sure it wasn’t Italian they were speaking. I think the tall one was the boss, a handsome man, I must say, a little bit too stout, about forty. He looked as if he’d just come from the barber’s.”

  “And the short one?”

  “More vulgar. He had a broken nose, ears like a boxer’s, and a gold front tooth. He wore a pearl-gray hat and a gray overcoat; the other one had a brand-new camel’s-hair coat.”

  “Didn’t your husband hurry right home?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t he have the district police come over?”

  “No, he didn’t. He told me not to worry, even if he didn’t come home for several days. I asked him what I’d do about food, and he said he’d attend to it.”

  “And did he?”

  “Yes. The next morning, delivery boys brought everything I needed. They came back again this morning.”

  “You didn’t hear from Lognon all day yesterday?”

  “He telephoned me twice.”

  “And today?”

  “Once, about nine o’clock.”

  “You don’t know where he was when he phoned?”

  “No. He never tells me where he is. I don’t know how other inspectors are with their wives, but he…”

  “Let’s get to the visit you had this morning.”

  “Again I heard someone on the stairs.”

  “What time was it?”

  “A little after ten. I didn’t look at the clock. Perhaps ten-thirty.”

  “They were the same men?”

  “There was only one. I’d never seen him before. He didn’t knock, came right in as if he had the key. Maybe he had a passkey. I was in the kitchen preparing my vegetables. I got up and I saw him standing in the doorway.

  “ ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘And don’t scream. I’m not going to hurt you.’ ”

  “Did he have a foreign accent?”

  “Yes. He made several mistakes in French. This one, I’m sure, was really an American, a tall, reddish-blond man with broad shoulders, and he was chewing gum. He looked all around with curiosity, as if he’d never been in a Paris apartment before. When he glanced in the living room he noticed right away the certificate Lognon received after twenty-five years in the police.”

  The certificate was in a black wooden frame ornamented in gold, with Lognon’s name and title written in large round letters.

  “ ‘So he’s a cop,’ the man said. ‘Where is he?’ I told him I didn’t know, and he didn’t seem to care. Then he began opening drawers and rummaging through papers, tossing them around so carelessly some fell on the floor.

  “He found a photograph of my husband and me taken fifteen years ago. He looked at me and shook his head. Then he slipped the picture in his pocket.”

  “In short, he hadn’t expected to find that your husband was a policeman?”

  “He didn’t seem exactly surprised, but I feel sure he didn’t know it when he came.”

  “Did he ask what department he belonged to?” r />
  “He asked me where he could find him. I said I didn’t have the least idea, that my husband never talked to me about his work.”

  “He didn’t insist?”

  “He went on reading everything he could lay his hands on.”

  “Were your husband’s credentials in a drawer?”

  “Yes. The man put some of them in his pocket with the photograph. In the sideboard he found a bottle of Calvados and poured himself a big drink.”

  “That’s all?”

  “He looked under the bed, like the others, and in the closets. He went back to the dining room for another drink. Then he left, making me a most sarcastic bow.”

  “Did you notice if he was wearing gloves?”

  “Pigskin gloves, yes.”

  “And the other two?”

  “I think they were wearing gloves too. The one who threatened me with his revolver was, I know.”

  “Did you look out the window again?”

  “Yes. I saw him leave the house and join one of the others, the short one, who was waiting at the corner of Rue Caulaincourt. Right away I phoned the Rochefoucauld police station and asked to speak to Lognon. They told me they hadn’t seen him this morning, that they didn’t expect him, and when I insisted, they said he hadn’t been there last night at all, though he’s on night duty.”

  “Did you tell them what had happened?”

  “No. Right away I thought of you, Superintendent. You see, I know Lognon better than anyone. He’s a man who tries too hard. Till now he’s never had the recognition he deserves, but he has often spoken of you. I know that you are not like the others, that you are not jealous of him, that… I’m frightened, Monsieur Maigret. He must have taken on someone stronger than himself, and, by this time, God knows where…”

  The telephone rang in the bedroom. Madame Lognon gave a start.

  “Will you excuse me, please?”

  Maigret could hear her in a suddenly changed tone saying stiffly:

  “Oh, it’s you, is it? Where have you been? I telephoned your office, and they said you hadn’t set foot in the place since yesterday. Superintendent Maigret is here…”

  Maigret, who had followed her, reached for the telephone.