Maigret Bides His Time Read online

  MAIGRET BIDES HIS TIME

  GEORGES SIMENON

  Chapter 1

  The day had started like a memory of childhood, dazzling and delectable. For no reason, because life was wonderful, Maigret's eyes laughed as he had his breakfast, and the eyes of Madame Maigret, who was sitting opposite him, were just as merry.

  The windows of the flat were wide open, letting in the smells from outside, the familiar noises from Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and the air, already warm, was quivering; a fine vapor filtered the sunrays and made them almost tangible.

  "You're not tired?"

  He replied with surprise, sipping his coffee, which seemed better than on other days:

  "Why should I be tired?"

  "All that work you did yesterday in the garden...

  You hadn't touched a spade or a rake for months..."

  It was Monday. Monday, July 7. On Saturday night they had taken the train to Meung-sur-Loire, to the little house they had been preparing for several years, for the day when Maigret would be obliged to retire.

  In two years and a few months. At the age of fifty-five! As if a man of fifty-five, who had never really been ill and was not handicapped by any infirmity, would suddenly be unable to run the Crime Squad!

  What Maigret found most difficult to conceive was that he had lived fifty-three years.

  "Yesterday," he corrected her, "I slept most of the time."

  "In the sun!"

  "With my handkerchief over my face..."

  What a pleasant Sunday! A stew simmering in the kitchen, with its blue stone tiles, the scent of the St.-John's-wort, which spread through the house, Madame Maigret going from one room to another, a scarf on her head because of the dust, Maigret in his shirt sleeves, his collar open, wearing a straw hat, weeding, digging, hoeing, raking, and finally dropping off to sleep after lunch and the local white wine, in a red-and-yellow-striped deck chair, where the sun soon reached him but could not rouse him.

  In the train back, they both felt heavy and sluggish, their eyelids stinging, and with them they carried a smell that reminded Maigret of his youth in the country, a mixture of hay, dry earth, and sweat: the smell of summer.

  "More coffee?"

  "I'd love some."

  Even his wife's checked apron delighted him by its freshness, by a sort of simplicity, just as he was delighted by the glint of the sun on one of the panes of the sideboard.

  "It's going to be hot."

  "Yes."

  He would open his windows overlooking the Seine and work in his shirt sleeves.

  "What would you say to lobster with mayonnaise for lunch?"

  It was pleasant, too, to walk along the street, where the awnings of the shops formed dark rectangles, pleasant to wait for the bus next to a girl in a light dress on the corner of Boulevard Voltaire.

  Luck was on his side. An old bus with an open platform drew up to the curb, and he could go on smoking his pipe as he watched the scenery and the figures of the pedestrians glide past.

  Why did they remind him of a brightly colored procession that had drawn the whole of Paris when he had just got married and was only a shy young clerk in the Saint-Lazare police station? Some foreign sovereign and his plumed court were riding in landaus, and the helmets of the Republican Guard glimmered in the sun.

  Paris had the same smell as today, the same light, the same languor.

  He had not thought of retirement then. The end of his career, the end of his life seemed very distant, so distant that he did not worry about them. And here he was preparing the home for his old age!

  No melancholy. A rather sweet smile, really. The Chàtelet. The Seine. An angler—there was always at least one—near the Pont au Change. Then some lawyers in black robes gesticulating in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice.

  Finally the Quai des Orfevres, whose every stone he knew and from where he had almost been banished.

  Less than ten days earlier, a martinet of a Chief Commissioner, who did not approve of inspectors of the old school, had asked him to resign—to retire early, as he more elegantly put it—on the pretext of some rash act the Superintendent was supposed to have committed.

  Everything, or almost everything, in the file he had leafed through with a negligent finger, was false, and, for three days and three nights, without even being allowed to make use of his colleagues, Maigret had endeavored to prove it.

  Not only had he succeeded, but he had extracted a confession from the perpetrator of the deed, a dentist on Rue des Acacias, who had several crimes on his conscience.

  That was all over. After greeting the two policemen on duty, he climbed the wide staircase, entered his office, opened the windows, took off his hat and jacket, and stood contemplating the Seine and its boats as he slowly filled a pipe.

  Despite unforeseen events, there were almost ritual movements, which he made automatically, like, once his pipe was alight, pushing open the door of the inspectors' office.

  There were gaps in front of the typewriters and telephones because the holidays had started.

  "Hello, boys...Can you come in for a second, Janvier?"

  Janvier was leading the investigation of the burglaries in jewelers' shops, or, rather, in jewelers' windows. The last one had been on Thursday, on Boulevard du Montparnasse, and the criminals had employed methods that had proved effective for over two years.

  "Anything new?"

  "Hardly anything. Young men, again: aged from twenty to twenty-five, according to the witnesses. Two of them did it, as usual. One broke the window with a tire iron. The other, who had a black bag in his hand, swept up the jewels, with the help of his friend. It was carefully timed. A cream-colored car stopped just long enough to pick up the two men and disappeared in traffic."

  "Handkerchiefs over their faces?"

  Janvier nodded.

  "The driver?"

  "The witnesses don't all agree, but it seems he's young, too, very dark hair, and sunburned. There's only one new clue, and that's pretty vague: just before the burglary, a vegetable seller noticed a man, not tall, tough, with a face like a boxer's, standing a few yards away from the jeweler's, as though he were waiting for someone, often looking up at the clock over the window and then checking his wrist watch. According to the woman, he didn't once take his hand out of his right pocket. During the burglary he didn't budge, and, after the cream-colored car had moved off, he got into a taxi."

  "Did you show your vegetable seller the photographs of the suspects?"

  "She spent three hours with me in Criminal Records. In the end she didn't give a formal recognition of anybody."

  "What does the jeweler say?"

  "He's tearing the little hair he's got left.

  Three days earlier, he claims, the burglary wouldn't have mattered much, because he doesn't usually like having valuable jewels on display. Last week he was able to buy a batch of emeralds and on Saturday morning he decided to put them in the window."

  Maigret did not yet realize that what was building up in his office that morning was the beginning of the end of a case that was thenceforth to be known at the Quai des Orfevres as "Maigret's longest investigation."

  And so certain facts gradually become legendary. "Maigret's longest interrogation" was still being discussed, for example, and newcomers were told about that interrogation, which had lasted twenty-seven hours, during which the waiter from the Brasserie Dauphine had never stopped bringing up beer and sandwiches.

  Maigret was not the only one to question the suspect. Lucas and Janvier took over, perpetually starting from scratch an interrogation that seemed tedious but nevertheless ended in a full confession.

  And the recollections all included "Maigret's most dangerous arrest"—the arre
st of the gang of Poles in broad daylight, on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, without a shot being fired, although the men were armed to the teeth and determined to save their skins.

  It might in fact be said that the jewel case started twenty years earlier for the Superintendent, when he took an interest in a certain Manuel Palmari, a vagrant from Corsica who had started humbly as a pimp.

  It was the time of relief. The old gang leaders, brothel owners before the war, keepers of secret gambling dens, and organizers of spectacular burglaries, had gone into retirement one after the other, on the banks of the Marne, in the South, and, the less lucky ones or the less clever ones, to the prison of Fontevrault.

  Young men, thinking they were going to smash everything to smithereens, took over, bolder than their predecessors, and, for a long time, the police force was baffled and kept at bay.

  It was the beginning of attacks on cashiers and jewel burglaries in broad daylight, in the middle of the crowd.

  A few culprits were eventually arrested. The crimes ceased for a while, resumed and decreased again, to continue with renewed vigor two years later.

  "The kids we arrest are only carrying out orders," Maigret had stated ever since the raids began.

  Not only were new faces reported each time, but most of those who were arrested had no police record. They were not from Paris either, and appeared to have come up from the provinces, mainly from Marseilles, Toulon, and Nice, for a specific operation.

  Only on a couple of occasions had they chosen the big jewelers, on Place Vendome and Rue de la Paix, who had alarm systems that discouraged criminals.

  Their technique had soon changed. They now aimed at unimportant jewelers, no longer in the heart of Paris, but on the outskirts and even in the suburbs.

  "Well, Manuel?"

  Ten times, a hundred times, Maigret had upbraided Palmari, first at the Clou Dorè, the bar he had bought on Rue Fontaine and turned into a luxurious restaurant, and then in the apartment he shared with Aline on Rue des Acacias.

  Manuel never let himself be put out, and their meetings could have passed as meetings between two old friends.

  "Sit down, Superintendent. What do you want now?"

  Manuel was now nearly sixty and, ever since he had been hit by several machine-gun bullets as he was lowering the blind of the Clou Dorè, he had never left his little wheelchair.

  "Do you know a young man, a real little nuisance, called Mariani, who was born on your island?"

  Maigret filled his pipe, because this always lasted a long time. He finally knew every nook of the apartment on Rue des Acacias, above all the little corner room, full of cheap novels and phonograph records, where Manuel spent his days.

  "What's this Mariani done? And why pester me again, Superintendent?"

  "I've always been straight with you, haven't I?"

  "That's true."

  "I've even done you little favors..."

  That was true, too. Without Maigret's intervention, Manuel would have had a number of difficulties.

  "If you want it to continue, tell me..."

  Manuel occasionally told, or, in other words, gave up an operator.

  "You know, it's only a theory. I've never been in trouble and my record's clear. I don't know Mariani personally. I've just heard..."

  "Who from?"

  "I don't know. A rumor..."

  Since he lost a leg, Palmari hardly saw a soul. He knew his telephone was tapped and he made sure he made only innocent calls.

  Moreover, for the last few months, since the revival of the jewel robberies, two inspectors had been permanently posted to Rue des Acacias.

  If there were two of them, it was because one had to trail Aline, while his colleague watched the building.

  "Oh, well...To do you a favor...

  There's an inn near Lagny—I've forgotten its name—that's kept by an old man who's half deaf and his daughter...I believe Mariani is keen on the girl and likes staying there..."

  Every time, over the last twenty years, that Manuel had shown signs of increased prosperity, this prosperity had coincided with a revival of the jewel robberies.

  "Was the car found?" Maigret asked Janvier.

  "In a side street in the Halles."

  "Any clues?"

  "Nothing. Moers virtually went over it with a microscope."

  It was time for the report in the Chief's office, and Maigret joined the other superintendents.

  They each summarized the current cases.

  "And you, Maigret? These jewelers?"

  "Do you know how many jewelers there are in Paris, sir, not to mention the suburban ones? Just over three thousand. Some of them only display jewels and watches of no great value, but on the whole we can say that a good thousand of these shops have something on show to tempt an organized gang."

  "What are your conclusions?"

  "Let's take the jeweler's on Boulevard du Montparnasse. For months it displayed only mediocre objects. By chance, the other week, the dealer got hold of some valuable emeralds. On Saturday morning he decided to put them on display. On Thursday the window was smashed to bits and the jewels were stolen."

  "You think..."

  "I'm almost certain that a man in the trade makes the rounds of the jewelers, periodically changing districts. Someone is alerted the minute the best pieces are displayed in a good place.

  Some youngsters who have been taught the technique and who aren't suspected by the police are brought up from Marseilles or elsewhere. Two or three times I set a trap, asking jewelers to show some rare pieces."

  "Did the gang fall into it?"

  Maigret shook his head and relit his pipe.

  "I'm patient" was all he muttered.

  The Chief, less patient than he was, did not conceal his displeasure.

  "And it's been going on for..." he began.

  "Twenty years, sir."

  A few minutes later Maigret was back in his office, happy to have remained serene and good-humored. Once again he opened the inspectors' door, because he hated calling them on the telephone.

  "Janvier!"

  "I was waiting for you, Chief. I've just received a phone call..."

  He came into Maigret's office and shut the door.

  "Something unexpected...Manuel Palmari..."

  "Don't say he's disappeared?"

  "He's been killed. He was shot in his wheelchair. The Superintendent from the Seventeenth Arrondissement is on the spot and he's informed the Public Prosecutor."

  "Aline?"

  "Apparently she called the police."

  "Come on."

  At the door Maigret retraced his steps to take a spare pipe from his desk.

  As Janvier drove the little black car up the Champs-Elysèes in a halo of light, Maigret retained the slight smile on his lips, the twinkle in his eyes, which he had had since he woke up and which he had seen on the lips and in the eyes of his wife.

  And yet, deep within himself, if there was not a feeling of sadness, there was at least a certain nostalgia. The death of Manuel Palmari would not send the world into mourning. Apart, perhaps—and that was not certain—from Aline, who had lived with him for several years and whom he had picked up in the street; apart, too, from certain vagrants who owed him everything, his only funeral eulogy would be a vague:

  "He had it coming to him..."

  One day Manuel had disclosed to Maigret that he, too, had been a choirboy in his home village, a village so poor, he added, that boys left it at the age of fifteen to get away from the misery. He had wandered around the docks in Toulon, where he was later to be found as a bartender and where he soon realized that women constituted capital that could provide a large income.

  Had he one or several crimes on his conscience? Some people made insinuations, but it had never been proved, and one fine day Palmari had become proprietor of the Clou Dorè.

  He thought he was cunning, and it was true that until the age of sixty he had moved so adroitly that he had never run the risk of being conv
icted.

  Admittedly, he had not escaped the machine-gun bullets, but in his wheelchair, among his books and his records, between the radio and the television, he continued to love life, and Maigret suspected him of loving even more passionately, even more tenderly, this Aline, who called him Daddy.

  "You shouldn't see the Superintendent. Daddy. I know the cops and I'm fed up with them. This one's no better than the rest of them. One day, you'll see—he'll use what he pumps out of you against you."

  The girl sometimes used to spit on the floor at Maigret's feet, and walk away with dignity, waggling her hard little behind.

  Maigret had left Rue des Acacias less than ten days ago and here he was again, in the same building, in the same apartment, where, standing by the open window, he had suddenly had an intuition that had enabled him to reconstruct the crimes of the dentist living across the street.

  Two cars were parked in front of the building.

  A policeman in uniform was standing by the door, and, recognizing Maigret, he saluted.

  "The fourth floor, on the left," he murmured.

  "I know."

  The district Police Superintendent, named Clerdent, stood in the living-room talking to a small, plump man with very fair, tousled hair, white, babylike skin, and ingenuous blue eyes.

  "Good morning, Maigret."

  Seeing Maigret look at his companion, not knowing whether to shake hands, he added:

  "Don't you know each other?...

  Superintendent Maigret...Monsieur Ancelin, the Examining Magistrate..."

  "Pleased to meet you, Superintendent."

  "It's my pleasure, Monsieur Ancelin.

  I've heard a lot about you but I haven't yet worked with you."

  "I was appointed to Paris only five months ago. I spent a long time in Lille."

  He had a high-pitched voice and, despite his plumpness, seemed far younger than he was.

  He looked more like one of those students who stay on at the university, in no hurry to leave the Latin Quarter and the easy life. Easy, of course, for those who have a rich daddy.

  He was sloppily dressed, his jacket too narrow, his trousers too wide and baggy around the knees, and his shoes needed brushing.