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  Maigret and the Burglar's Wife

  Maigret et la grande perche

  the 66th episode in the Maigret Saga

  1951

  Georges Simenon

  Translated from the French by J. Maclaren-Ross

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  A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0

  click for scan notes and proofing history

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  Contents

  |1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|

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  A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers

  San Diego New York London

  Copyright © 1956, 1955 by Georges Simenon Copyright renewed 1984, 1983 by Georges Simenon

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to:

  Permissions Department,

  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers,

  Orlando, Florida32887.

  Originally published as Maigret et la grande perche in France, 1951.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Simenon, Georges, 1903 -1989.

  [Maigret et la grande perche. English]

  Maigret and the burglar’s wife / Georges Simenon ; translated by J. Maclaren-Ross. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Translation of: Maigret et la grande perche.

  “A Helen and Kurt Wolff book.”

  ISBN 0-15-155572-9

  I. Title.

  PQ2637.153M25713 1990 843'.912—dc20 89-15625

  Designed by Kaelin Chappell

  Printed in the United States of America

  Second United States edition

  A B C D E

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  Maigret and the Burglar’s Wife

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  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  The official slip of paper, duly filled in and handed to Maigret by the office boy, read:

  Ernestine Micou, alias Lofty (now Jussiaume), who, when you arrested her seventeen years ago on rue de la Lune, stripped herself naked to taunt you, requests the favor of an interview on a matter of most urgent and important business.

  Maigret glanced quickly out of the corner of his eye at old Joseph, to see whether he’d read the message, but the white-haired “office boy” didn’t move a muscle. He was probably the only one in the whole of the Police Judiciaire that morning who wasn’t in shirtsleeves, and for the first time in many years the Chief Inspector wondered by what official vagary this almost venerable man was compelled to wear around his neck a heavy chain with a huge seal.

  It was the sort of day when one is apt to indulge in pointless speculation. The heat wave may have been to blame. Perhaps the vacation spirit also prevented one from taking things very seriously. The windows were wide open, and the muted roar of Paris throbbed in the room, where, before Joseph came in, Maigret had been engaged in following the flight of a wasp, which was going around in circles and bumping against the ceiling invariably at the same spot. At least half of the inspectors were either at the seaside or in the country. Lucas went wearing a straw hat, which, on him, looked like a native grass hat or a lampshade. The Big Chief had left the day before for the Pyrenees, where he went year after year.

  “Drunk?” Maigret asked Joseph.

  “Don’t think so, sir.”

  A certain type of woman, having taken a drop too much, often feels impelled to make disclosures to the police.

  “Nervous?”

  “She asked me if it would be long, and I said I didn’t even know if you’d see her. She sat herself down in a corner of the waiting room and started to read the paper. ”

  Maigret couldn’t recall the names Micou or Jussiaume, or the nickname Lofty, but he retained a vivid memory of rue de la Lune, on a day as hot as this, when the asphalt feels elastic underfoot and fills Paris with the smell of tar.

  It was near Porte St.-Denis, a little street of dubious hotels and small pastry shops. He wasn’t a chief inspector in those days. The women wore low-cut dresses and had bobbed hair. To find out about this girl, he’d had to go into two or three neighborhood bistros, and he’d been drinking Pernod. He could almost conjure up the smell of it, just as he could conjure up the smell of armpits and feet pervading the small hotel. The room was on the fourth or fifth floor. Choosing the wrong door, he’d found himself face to face with a black man sitting on the bed and playing the accordion: a member of the band in a bal musette, probably. Quite unperturbed, the man had indicated the room next door with a jerk of his chin.

  “Come in!”

  A husky voice, the voice of one who drank or smoked too much. Standing by a window that opened on the courtyard was a girl in a sky-blue dressing gown, cooking a chop on an alcohol stove.

  She was taller than Maigret. She’d looked him up and down with no expression and said: “You’re a cop?”

  He’d found the wallet and the money on top of the wardrobe; she hadn’t batted an eyelid.

  “It was my girlfriend who did it.”

  “What girlfriend?”

  “Don’t know her name… Lulu, they call her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Find out. That’s your business.”

  “Get dressed and come with me.”

  It was only a case of petty theft, but the Police Judiciaire took a serious view of it—not so much because of the sum involved, though it was pretty large, but because it was taken from a big cattle dealer from the Charente, who had already stirred up his local deputy.

  “It’ll take more than you to keep me from eating my chop!”

  The tiny room contained only one chair, so he’d remained standing while the girl ate, taking her time. He might not have been there, for all the attention she paid him.

  She must have been about twenty at the time. She was pale, with colorless eyes and a long bony face. He could see her now, picking her teeth with a matchstick and pouring boiling water into the coffeepot.

  “I asked you to get dressed.”

  He was hot. The smell of the hotel turned his stomach. Had she sensed that he was ill at ease?

  Calmly, she’d taken off her dressing gown, her slip and panties. Stark naked, she’d lain down on the unmade bed and lit a cigarette.

  “I’m waiting!” he’d told her impatiently, looking away with an effort.

  “So am I.”

  “I have a warrant for your arrest.”

  “Well, arrest me, then!”

  “Get dressed and come along.”

  “I’m all right like this.”

  The whole thing was ludicrous. She was cool, quite passive, only a little glint of irony showing in her colorless eyes.

  “You say I’m under arrest. I don’t mind. But you needn’t ask me to give you a hand. I’m in my own place. It’s hot, and I have a right to take my clothes off. If you insist that I go with you, just as I am, I won’t complain.”

  At least a dozen times he’d told her: “Get your things on!”

  And, perhaps because of her pale flesh, perhaps because of the surrounding squalor, it seemed to him that he’d never seen a woman so naked. He’d thrown her clothes on the bed, threatened her, tried persuasion, to no avail.

  Finally, he’d gone down and called two policemen, and the scene became absurd. They’d had to wrap the girl forcibly in a blanket and carry her, like a package, down the narrow staircase, and all the doors opened as they went by.

  He’d never seen her since. He’d ne
ver heard her mentioned.

  “Send her in!” He sighed.

  He knew her at once. She didn’t seem to have changed. He recognized her long pale face, the washed-out eyes, the big lipsticked mouth, which looked like a raw wound. He recognized also, in her glance, the quiet irony of those who have seen so much that nothing’s any longer important in their eyes.

  She was simply dressed, wore a light-green straw hat, and had put on gloves.

  “Still got it in for me?”

  He drew on his pipe without answering.

  “Can I sit down? I heard you’d been promoted, and that’s why I never ran into you again. Is it all right if I smoke?”

  She took a cigarette from her bag and lit it.

  “I want to tell you right away, with no hard feelings, that I was telling the truth that time. I got a year I didn’t deserve. There was a girl called Lulu, all right, but you didn’t take the trouble to find her… The two of us were together when we ran across that fat slob. He picked us both up, but when he took a good look at me, he told me to get going, because he couldn’t stand ’em skinny. I was outside in the hall when Lulu slipped me the wallet an hour after, so I could ditch it.”

  “What became of her?”

  “Five years ago she had a little restaurant down south… I just wanted to show you everyone sometimes makes mistakes.”

  “Is that why you came?”

  “No. I wanted to talk to you about Alfred. If he knew I was here, he’d think I was crazy. I could’ve gone to Inspector Boissier; the inspector knows all about him.”

  “Who’s Alfred?”

  “My husband. Lawfully wedded, too, before the mayor and the vicar, because he still goes to church. Boissier’s picked him up two or three times. And one of those times he got Alfred five years in Fresnes.”

  Her voice was almost harsh.

  “The name Jussiaume doesn’t mean much to you, maybe, but when I tell you what they call him, you’ll know who he is right away. There’s been a lot about him in the papers… He’s Sad Freddie.”

  “Safecracker?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve had a fight?”

  “No. It’s not what you think I’ve come for. I’m not that sort… So you know who Fred is now?”

  Maigret had never met him, but had seen him in the corridors of the PJ when the safecracker was waiting to be interrogated by Boissier. He vaguely recalled a puny little man with anxious eyes, whose clothes seemed too big for his scrawny body.

  “Of course, we don’t look at him the same way,” she said. “Poor dope. There’s more to him than you think. I’ve lived with him nearly twelve years, and I’m only starting to get to know him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’m coming to that, don’t worry… I don’t know where he is, but he’s in a jam, and it’s not his fault. That’s why I’m here. But you’ve got to trust me, and I know that’s asking a lot.”

  He was watching her with interest, because she spoke with appealing simplicity. She wasn’t putting on airs, wasn’t trying to impress him. If she took some time in coming to the point, it was because what she had to tell was genuinely complicated.

  There was still a barrier between them, nevertheless, and it was this barrier she was trying hard to break down, so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea of things.

  About Sad Freddie, with whom he’d never had any personal dealings, Maigret knew little more than what he’d heard around the PJ. The man was somewhat of a celebrity, and the newspapers had tried their best to turn him into a romantic figure.

  He had been employed for years by Planchait, the big safe-making firm, and had become one of their most skilled workers. He was, even at that time, a sad, retiring youth, in poor health and subject to epileptic fits.

  Boissier would probably be able to tell Maigret how he had come to give up his job at Planchart.

  Whatever the cause, Sad Freddie had turned from installing safes to cracking them.

  “When you first met him, did he still have a steady job?”

  “No… It wasn’t me that sent him off the straight and narrow, in case that’s what you’re thinking. He was doing odd jobs. Sometimes he’d work for a locksmith… But it wasn’t long before I saw what he was really up to.”

  “You don’t think you’d do better to see Boissier?”

  “Housebreaking’s his line, isn’t it? You’re the one who deals with murder.”

  “Has Alfred killed somebody?”

  “Look, Chief Inspector, I think we’ll get along faster if you just let me talk… Alfred may be anything you want to call him, but he wouldn’t murder for all the money in the world. It may seem soppy to say this about a fellow like him, but he’s sensitive… I ought to know. Anyone else would say he was soft. But that was the reason I fell in love with him.”

  She looked at him quietly. She’d uttered the word “love” without particular emphasis, yet with a sort of pride.

  “If you knew what was going on in his head, you wouldn’t be surprised… Not that it matters. Far as you’re concerned, he’s just a thief who got himself picked up once and did five years…

  “I never missed a single visiting day, and all that time I had to go back to my old beat, at the risk of getting in trouble… not having a card, and that was when you still had to have one…

  “He always hopes he’ll pull off a big job, and then we can go live in the country. He’s always dreamed of it, ever since he was little.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “On Quai de Jemmapes, opposite the St. Martin lock. Know where I mean?… We’ve got two rooms over a café, painted green, and it’s very handy because of the phone.”

  “Is Alfred there now?”

  “No. I already told you I don’t know where he is, and, believe me, I don’t. He did a job—not last night, but the night before.”

  “And he’s disappeared?”

  “Hang on, will you, Chief Inspector! You’ll see later on that everything I’m telling you has a point.

  “You know people who buy national lottery tickets for every draw, don’t you? Some of them go without eating to buy them, because they figure that in a day or two they’ll be in the money at last. Well, that’s the way it is with Alfred. There are dozens of safes in Paris that he installed himself, safes he knows like the back of his hand. Usually when you buy a safe, it’s to put money or jewels away in.”

  “He hopes to strike it lucky someday?”

  “That’s it. ” She shrugged, as though speaking of a child’s harmless enthusiasm.

  Then she added: “He’s just unlucky. Most times all he gets are title deeds you can’t sell, or business contracts. Only once was there big money, money he could have lived on quietly for the rest of his days. And that was the time Boissier caught him.”

  “Were you with him? Are you the lookout?”

  “No. He never liked me to… In the beginning, he used to tell me where he was going, and I’d fix it so I was nearby. When he spotted that, he stopped telling me anything. ”

  “Afraid you’d get caught?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe because he’s superstitious… See, even when we’re together, he’s all alone really. Sometimes he doesn’t say a word for two whole days… When I see him go out at night on his bicycle, I know what’s up.”

  Maigret remembered that some of the newspapers had dubbed Alfred Jussiaume “the burglar-on-a-bike.”

  “That’s another of his notions. He thinks that nobody, at night, is going to notice a man on a bicycle, especially if he’s got a bag of tools over his shoulder. That they’ll think he’s on his way to work… I’m talking to you like I would to a friend, see?”

  Maigret wondered again why she had come. When she took out another cigarette, he held a lighted match for her.

  “Today’s Thursday. On Tuesday night, Alfred went out on a job.”

  “Did he tell you so?”

  “Well, he’d been going out for several nights just before, and that’s a
lways a sign. Before he breaks into a house or an office, he sometimes spends a week watching, to get to know the people’s habits.”

  “And to make sure there’ll be no one around?”

  “No. That doesn’t matter to him. I think he’d rather work where there was somebody, instead of in an empty house. He can move around without making a sound. Why, hundreds of times he’s slipped into bed beside me at night and I never so much as knew he’d come home.”

  “Do you know where he worked night before last?”

  “All I know is it was in Neuilly. And I only found that out by chance… The day before, when I came in, he told me the police had asked to see his papers, and he thought they must’ve taken him for a dirty old man, because they stopped him in the Bois de Boulogne, right by the place where women go and clean up.

  “ ‘Where was it?’ I asked him.

  “ ‘Behind the zoo. I was coming back from Neuilly.’

  “Then, night before last, he took his bag of tools, and I knew he’d gone to work.”

  “He hadn’t been drinking?”

  “Never touches a drop. Doesn’t smoke. He’s never been able to. He’s afraid of his fits, and he’s ashamed when one happens in the middle of the street, where people crowd around and feel sorry for him…

  “Before he left, he said: ‘I think this time we’re really going to live in the country.’ ”

  Maigret had begun to take notes, which he was surrounding idly with arabesques.

  “What time did he leave Quai de Jemmapes?”

  “About eleven, like he did on the other nights.”

  “Then he must have got to Neuilly around midnight.”

  “Maybe. He never rode fast. But at that time, there’d be no traffic.”

  “When did you see him again?”

  “I haven’t seen him again.”

  “So you think something may have happened to him?”

  “He telephoned me.”

  “When?”

  “Five in the morning… I wasn’t asleep. I was worried. If he’s always afraid he’ll have a fit in the street, I’m always afraid it might happen while he’s working. Anyway, I heard the phone ringing downstairs in the café. Our room’s right above. The owners didn’t get up, so I guessed it might be for me, and I went down. I knew right away from his voice there’d been a hitch. He talked very low.