Maigret and the Calame Report Read online

  Maigret and the Calame Report

  Maigret chez le ministre

  the 74th episode in the Maigret Saga

  1954

  Georges Simenon

  Translated from the French by Moura Budberg

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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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  maigret and the calame report

  Originally published in England under the title Maigret and the Minister

  A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

  Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. New York

  Copyright © 1954 by Georges Simenon

  English translation copyright © 1969 by Hamish Hamilton Ltd. and

  Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

  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.

  First American edition

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-78874

  Printed in the United States of America

  Originally published in French under the title Maigret Chez le Ministre

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  Chapter 1

  ^ »

  Every evening when he came home Maigret stopped at the same spot on the sidewalk, just after the gas lamp, and raised his eyes to the lighted windows of his apartment. It was an automatic movement. Probably if he had been asked whether there were lights there or not, he would have hesitated before replying. In the same way, almost as if it were a sort of compulsion, he began unbuttoning his coat between the second and the third floor and searching for the key in the pocket of his trousers, though invariably the door opened as soon as he stepped on the door mat.

  These were rites that had taken years to become established and to which he was more accustomed than he would have cared to admit to himself. It was not raining tonight, so it did not apply, but his wife, for instance, had a special way of taking his wet umbrella from his hand at the same time as she bent her head to kiss him on the cheek.

  He brought out the traditional question:

  “No telephone calls?”

  She replied, closing the door:

  “Yes, there was one. I’m afraid it’s hardly worth your while taking off your coat.”

  The day had been gray, neither hot nor cold, with a sudden shower toward two o’clock in the afternoon. At the Quai des Orfèvres, Maigret had attended only to routine business.

  “Did you have a good dinner?”

  The light in their apartment was warmer, more intimate than at the office. He could see the newspapers and his slippers waiting for him beside his armchair.

  “I had dinner with the boss and Lucas and Janvier at the Brasserie Dauphine.”

  Afterward the four of them had gone to a meeting of the Police Benevolent Association of which, for three years running and much against his will, Maigret had been elected Vice-President.

  “You’ve got time for a cup of coffee. Take your coat off for a minute. I said you wouldn’t be back before eleven.”

  It was half past ten. The meeting had not lasted long. There had been time for some of them to have a beer in a bar, and Maigret had come home by subway.

  “Who called?”

  “A Cabinet Minister.”

  Standing in the middle of the sitting room, he frowned at her.

  “What Cabinet Minister?”

  “The Minister of Public Works. Point, I think he said.”

  “That’s right, Auguste Point. He telephoned here? Himself?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell him to call the Quai des Orfèvres?”

  “He wanted to speak to you personally. He has to see you very urgently. When I said you weren’t in, he wanted to know if I was the maid. He sounded upset. I told him I was Madame Maigret. He apologized, he wanted to know where you were and when you would be back. He sounded timid.”

  “That’s not his reputation.”

  “He even wanted to know if I was alone or not. And then he explained that his call was to be kept secret, that he wasn’t calling from the Ministry but from a public booth and that it was important for him to be in touch with you as quickly as possible.”

  While she was speaking, Maigret watched her, still frowning, with a look that proclaimed his distrust of politics. It had happened several times during his career that he had been approached by a statesman, a deputy or senator or some high official, but it had always been through the proper channels. He would be summoned to the boss’s office and the conversation would always begin with: “I’m sorry, my dear Maigret, to put you in charge of a business you won’t like.” And it always turned out to be something unsavory.

  He was not personally acquainted with Auguste Point; he had never even seen him. Nor was the Minister much quoted in the newspapers.

  “Why didn’t he call up the Quai?”

  He was really talking to himself. But Madame Maigret replied:

  “How do I know? I’m only repeating what he said to me. First of all, that he was speaking from a public booth…”

  This detail had particularly impressed Madame Maigret, to whom a Cabinet Minister was an individual of some importance, not to be imagined creeping in the dark into a public telephone booth at a street corner.

  “He also said that you were not to go to the Ministry, but to his private apartment…”

  She consulted a scrap of paper on which she had made some notes:

  “… at 27, Boulevard Pasteur. You don’t need to waken the concierge, it’s on the fourth floor, on the left.”

  “He’s waiting there for me?”

  “He’ll wait as long as he can. He has to be back at the Ministry before midnight.”

  Then, in a different tone, she asked:

  “Do you think it’s a hoax?”

  He shook his head, denying the possibility. It was certainly unusual, bizarre, but it did not sound like a hoax.

  “Will you have some coffee?”

  “No thanks, not after the beer.”

  Still standing, he poured himself a drop of plum brandy, took a fresh pipe from the mantelpiece, and moved toward the door.

  “Good-by.”

  Back in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, the humidity that had permeated the air all day had changed to a gray fog that threw a halo around the street lamps. He did not take a taxi, for it was as quick to reach Boulevard Pasteur by subway; besides, he did not feel he was on official business.

  All the way, as he stared abstractedly at the gentleman with whiskers reading the newspaper opposite him, he was wondering what it could possibly be that Auguste Point wanted of him and why he had arranged for them to meet so urgently and so mysteriously.

  All he knew of Auguste Point was that he was a lawyer from the Vendée—as well as he could remember, from La Roche-sur-Yon—and that he had entered politics late in life. He was one of those deputies elected after the war for their personal qualities and their conduct during the occupation.

  Exactly what that conduct had been Maigret did not know. Yet, while others of his colleagues had come and gone and left no trace behind them, Auguste Point had been re-elected time after time, and three months ago, when the last Cabinet was formed, he had been put at the head of the Ministry of Public Works.

  The Superintendent had heard no scandal about him of the kind that attached to the majority of public figures. Nor was there any gossip about his wife or his children, if he had any.

  By the time he left
the subway at the Boulevard Pasteur station, the fog had grown thick and yellow and Maigret could taste its smoky flavor on his lips. He saw no one on the boulevard and heard some steps only in the distance, toward Montparnasse, and a train that whistled as it left the station, going in the same direction.

  A few windows were still lighted and gave an impression of peace and security in the darkness. These houses, neither rich nor poor, neither old nor new, and divided into apartments all very much alike, were inhabited mainly by middle-class people, teachers, civil servants, junior executives who took the subway or the bus to work at precisely the same time every morning.

  He pressed the entrance door button and, when the door opened, muttered an indistinguishable name (for the benefit of the concierge) as he moved toward the elevator. It was a very narrow elevator, designed for two. Smoothly and noiselessly, it began its slow ascent in a dimly lit stair well. The doors on all floors were of an identical dark brown; even the door mats were alike.

  He rang the bell on the left, and the door opened immediately as if someone had been waiting inside with his hand on the knob.

  Auguste Point stepped outside and sent the elevator back, as Maigret had forgotten to do it.

  “I’m sorry for disturbing you at such a late hour,” he murmured. “Will you come in, please?”

  Madame Maigret would have been disappointed, for he did not at all correspond to her idea of a Cabinet Minister. He was about the same build and height as the Superintendent, though squarer and heavier-looking, true peasant stock as it were. His roughly chiseled features, the large nose and mouth, put one in mind of a carving in chestnut wood.

  He wore a plain gray suit with a nondescript tie. Three things were striking: the thick eyebrows, the size of his mustache, and the long hairs that covered his hands.

  He was studying Maigret, without attempting to conceal it, without even a polite smile.

  “Sit down, Superintendent.”

  The apartment, smaller than Maigret’s on Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, probably consisted of only two, perhaps three, rooms and the tiniest of kitchens. They had moved from the hall, where some clothes were hanging, to the study, which was typical of a bachelor’s quarters. A few pipes hung in a rack on the wall, ten or twelve of them, some of clay, one a beauty of a meerschaum. An old-fashioned desk, like the one Maigret’s father had had long ago, was covered with papers and tobacco ash; it had a set of pigeonholes and small drawers. Maigret did not quite dare to examine the photographs on the wall of Auguste Point’s father and mother in the same black and gold frames which he might have found in any farm in the Vendée.

  Sitting in his swivel chair, so similar to that of Maigret’s father, Auguste Point was playing with a box of cigars.

  “Would you like…” he began.

  The Superintendent said, smiling:

  “I prefer my pipe.”

  “Some of this?”

  The Minister offered him an open package of gray tobacco and relit his own pipe, which had gone out.

  “You must have been surprised when your wife told you…”

  He was trying to open the conversation but was not pleased with his attempt. Something curious was taking place.

  They sat there in the warm, peaceful study, both of the same build and of about the same age, quite openly studying one another. It was as if they had discovered the resemblance and were intrigued by it but were not quite ready yet to admit its existence.

  “Look, Maigret, between men like us, there’s no point in the usual formalities. I only know you from the newspapers and from what I’ve heard about you.”

  “Same with me, Your Excellency.”

  With a slight gesture, Auguste Point gave Maigret to understand that at this moment the use of the appellation was inappropriate.

  “I’m in terrible trouble. Nobody knows it yet, nobody even suspects it, neither the President of the State Council nor even my wife, and she usually knows my every movement. You’re the only one I’ve turned to.”

  For a moment he looked away and pulled at his pipe, as if embarrassed by what could be mistaken for vulgar flattery.

  “I didn’t want to do the conventional thing and go straight to the police. What I’m doing is irregular. You were under no obligation to come here, just as you are under no obligation to help me.” He got up, with a sigh.

  “Will you have a drink?”

  And with what could be taken as a smile:

  “Don’t worry. I’m not trying to bribe you. It’s just that tonight I really need a drink myself.”

  He went into the next room and came back with a half-finished bottle and two thick glasses of the kind used in country inns.

  “It’s only some homemade spirits that my father distills every autumn. This is about twenty years old.”

  They looked at each other, each holding a glass.

  “Your health!”

  “And yours, Your Excellency.”

  This time Auguste Point seemed not to hear the last words.

  “If I don’t know how to begin, it isn’t because you embarrass me, but because the story is difficult to tell with any degree of clarity. Do you read the newspapers?”

  “I do, on the nights when the criminals allow me some peace.”

  “You follow political events?”

  “Not much.”

  “You know that I’m not what is called a politician?”

  Maigret nodded in affirmation.

  “Very well. You’re probably aware of the Clairfond disaster?”

  This time Maigret could not help giving a start, and a certain anxiety, a certain caution, must have shown in his face, since the other man bent his head and added in a low voice:

  “Unhappily, this is what it’s all about!”

  A short time ago in the subway, Maigret had tried to puzzle out why the Minister had arranged to meet him in secret. The Clairfond affair had never entered his mind, though recently all the newspapers had been full of it.

  The Sanatorium of Clairfond, in Haute-Savoie, between Ugines and Mégève, at an elevation of 4,500 feet, was one of the most spectactular postwar achievements. It had been built some years ago, and Maigret had no idea who was originally responsible for the idea of establishing a place for abandoned children comparable to modern privately run sanatoria. At the time it had been much in the news. Some people had seen in it a purely political maneuver and there had been violent debates in the Chamber of Deputies. A commission had been selected to study the project and eventually, after much discussion, it had been realized.

  A month later came the disaster, one of the most distressing in history. Snow had begun to melt at a time when no human memory could recall its happening before. The mountain streams had swelled, as did a subterranean river, the Lize, of so little importance that it is not even marked on the map. It had undermined the foundations of a whole wing at Clairfond.

  The inquiry, opened on the day after the disaster, had not yet been completed. The experts could not come to an agreement. Neither could the newspapers which, according to their political persuasion, defended different theses.

  One hundred and twenty-eight children had died as one of the buildings had collapsed completely; the others were urgently evacuated.

  After a moment of silence Maigret murmured:

  “You were not in the Cabinet at the time of the construction, were you?”

  “No. I wasn’t even a member of the parliamentary commission that allocated the funds. To tell you the truth, up to a day or so ago I only knew what everyone knows of the business from the newspapers.”

  He paused.

  “Have you heard anything about the Calame report, Superintendent?”

  Maigret glanced at him, surprised, and shook his head.

  “You will be hearing about it soon. I’m afraid you’ll be hearing too much about it. I suppose you don’t read the weekly papers, the Rumor, for instance?”

  “Never.”

  “Do you know Henri Tabard?”

>   “By name and reputation only. My colleagues of the Rue des Saussaies would know him better than I do.”

  He was referring to the Criminal Investigation Department, which came under the Ministry of the Interior and was often asked to deal with cases of political connotation.

  Tabard was a carping journalist whose gossip-filled weekly had the reputation of a cheap blackmailing sheet.

  “Read this—it appeared six days after the disaster.”

  It was short, mysterious.

  “Will someone decide one day, under pressure of public opinion, to reveal the contents of the Calame report?”

  “Is that all?” The Superintendent was surprised.

  “Here is another item:

  “ ‘Contrary to popular belief, it will not be because of foreign policy, nor because of events in North Africa, that the present government will fall at the end of the spring, but because of the Calame report. Who is withholding the Calame report?’ ”

  There was an almost comic sound to the words and Maigret smiled as he asked:

  “Who is Calame?”

  But Auguste Point was not smiling. He emptied his pipe into a large copper ashtray while he explained:

  “He was a professor of the National School of Civil Engineering. He died two years ago, of cancer, I believe. His name is not widely known, but it is famous in the world of engineering and public works. Calame was called in as consultant for large projects in countries as different as Japan and South America, and he was an indisputable authority on everything concerning the resistance of building material, particularly concrete. He wrote a book, which neither you nor I have read, but which every architect knows, called The Diseases of Concrete.”

  “Was Calame involved in the building of Clairfond?”

  “Only indirectly. Let me tell you the story in a different way, more from my own standpoint. At the time of the disaster, as I told you, I knew nothing of the sanatorium that was not in the newspapers. I couldn’t even remember whether I had voted for or against the project five years earlier. I had to look up the records to find out that I had voted for it. Like you, I don’t read the Rumor. It was only after the second item appeared that the President of,the Council called me in and asked me: ‘Do you know the Calame report?’