Maigret at Picratt's Read online

  ‘Is that what she told you?’

  ‘Yes. Every day he got a report saying what she had been doing, almost by the minute.’

  ‘Was she already injecting then?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. He died and everyone was hellbent on getting their hands on the money he left her.’

  ‘Who’s everyone?’

  ‘Every gigolo on the Côte d’Azur, the professional gamblers, her girlfriends …’

  ‘She never mentioned any names?’

  ‘I don’t remember any. You know how it is. When you’ve had your fix, talking’s different.’

  Maigret only knew from hearsay, never having tried it himself.

  ‘Did she still have money?’

  ‘Not much. I think she was selling her jewellery as she went along.’

  ‘Did you see it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was she suspicious of you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He was so unsteady on his legs, which must have been skeletal under his baggy trousers, that Maigret motioned to him to sit down.

  ‘Was there anyone in Paris, besides you, who was still trying to squeeze her for money?’

  ‘She didn’t mention anyone.’

  ‘You never saw anyone in her apartment, or with her in the street, or in a bar?’

  Maigret sensed a definite hesitation.

  ‘N … no.’

  He gave him a hard look.

  ‘You haven’t forgotten what I told you?’

  But Philippe had gathered his wits.

  ‘I never saw anyone with her.’

  ‘Man or woman?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘You didn’t hear any mention of the name Oscar either?’

  ‘I don’t know anyone called that.’

  ‘She never seemed afraid of anyone?’

  ‘All she was afraid of was dying alone.’

  ‘She never argued with you?’

  He was too pale to blush, but there was still a vague colouring of the tips of his ears.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  With a knowing, slightly contemptuous smile, he added:

  ‘It always ended that way.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘Ask anyone.’

  Meaning: ‘Anyone who takes drugs.’

  Then, dully, as if he knew he wouldn’t be understood:

  ‘When she ran out and couldn’t get any immediately, she would fly into a rage with me, accusing me of begging her for morphine, even of stealing it, and swear there had been six or twelve phials in the drawer the day before.’

  ‘You had a key to her apartment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You never went in when she wasn’t there?’

  ‘She was almost always there. Sometimes she’d go a week or more without leaving her bedroom.’

  ‘Answer my question yes or no. You never went into her apartment when she wasn’t there?’

  A hesitation again, barely noticeable.

  ‘No.’

  Maigret muttered as if to himself, without pressing the point:

  ‘You’re lying!’

  Thanks to this Philippe character, the atmosphere in his office had become almost as suffocating and unreal as that of the apartment on Rue Victor-Massé.

  Maigret had enough knowledge of drug addicts to know that there must have been occasions, when he had run out, that Philippe would have been driven to get some at any price. Like the night before, when he was trying to scrape enough money together to leave, an addict would go around every single person he knew at times like that and put his hand out without a shred of human respect.

  At the bottom of the heap, where the young man spent his days, that couldn’t always be easy. So how could it fail to occur to him that the countess almost always had morphine in her drawer and that, if she was being tight-fisted with it, he just had to wait until she went out?

  It was only a hunch, but entirely logical.

  These people watched each other’s every move. Racked with jealousy, they stole from, and sometimes informed on, one another. The Police Judiciaire had lost count of the number of anonymous telephone calls from addicts wanting revenge.

  ‘When did you see her for the last time?’

  ‘The day before yesterday, in the morning.’

  ‘You’re sure it wasn’t yesterday morning?’

  ‘Yesterday morning I was sick and didn’t get out of bed.’

  ‘What was wrong?’

  ‘I hadn’t found any for two days.’

  ‘She didn’t give you any?’

  ‘She swore she’d run out and that the doctor hadn’t been able to give her some.’

  ‘Did you argue?’

  ‘We were both in a bad mood.’

  ‘Did you believe her?’

  ‘She showed me the empty drawer.’

  ‘When was she expecting the doctor?’

  ‘She didn’t know. She’d rung him, and he’d promised to go and see her.’

  ‘You didn’t go back to her apartment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right, listen carefully. The countess’s body was found yesterday around five p.m. The evening papers were already out. So the news only ran this morning. But you spent all night looking for money to go to Belgium. How did you know the countess was dead?’

  He was visibly on the verge of replying: ‘I didn’t know.’

  Maigret’s hard stare, however, made him change his mind.

  ‘I was passing her building and I saw a crowd on the pavement.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘About six thirty.’

  That had been when Maigret was in the apartment and a policeman had in fact been keeping gawkers away from the door.

  ‘Empty your pockets.’

  ‘Inspector Lognon has already made me empty them.’

  ‘Do it again.’

  He took out a dirty handkerchief, two keys on a key ring – one was the key of the suitcase – a penknife, a purse, a little tin containing pills, a wallet, a notebook and a hypodermic syringe in its case. Maigret seized the notebook, which was already old, its pages yellowed. It contained a mass of addresses and telephone numbers: almost no surnames, just initials or first names. Oscar was not one of them.

  ‘When you found out that the countess had been strangled, did you think you would be suspected?’

  ‘That’s always the way.’

  ‘So you decided to go to Belgium? You know someone there?’

  ‘I’ve been to Brussels a few times.’

  ‘Who gave you the money?’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘Which friend?’

  ‘I don’t know his name.’

  ‘You’d better tell me.’

  ‘It was the doctor.’

  ‘Doctor Bloch?’

  ‘Yes. I hadn’t had any luck. It was three in the morning, and I was getting scared. I ended up calling him from a bar on Rue Caulaincourt.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘That I was a friend of the countess and that I needed money very badly.’

  ‘Did it work immediately?’

  ‘I added that if I was arrested he could have some problems.’

  ‘In a word, you blackmailed him. He told you to meet him at his surgery?’

  ‘He told me to go to Rue Victor-Massé, where he lives, and said he’d be on the pavement.’

  ‘You didn’t ask him for anything else?’

  ‘He gave me a phial.’

  ‘I suppose you shot it up immediately in some doorway? Is that it? Got everything off your chest now?’

  ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘Is the doctor a fairy too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Philippe shrugged, as if the question were too naive.

  ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thirsty?’

  The young man’s lips were trembling, but food and drink were not what he ne
eded.

  Maigret got up as if it was an effort and opened the connecting door once again. Torrence happened to be there, big and strong, with his butcher’s apprentice’s hands. The people he interrogated were far from suspecting how softhearted he really was.

  ‘Come here,’ Maigret said to him. ‘You’re going to shut yourself up with this lad and only let him go when he’s coughed up everything he knows. Doesn’t matter whether it takes twenty-four hours or three days. When you’re tired, get someone to relieve you.’

  Philippe protested, wild-eyed:

  ‘I’ve told you all I know. You’re taking advantage of me.’

  Then, raising his voice like an angry woman:

  ‘You’re a brute! … You’re mean! … You … you …’

  Standing aside to let him past, Maigret exchanged winks with the hefty Torrence. The men crossed the large inspectors’ office and went into a room jokingly known as the chamber of confessions, although not before Torrence had called to Lapointe, ‘Get some beer and sandwiches sent up!’

  Once alone with his subordinates, Maigret stretched and sneezed and very nearly went and opened the window.

  ‘Well, then, boys?’

  Only then did he notice that Lucas was back already.

  ‘She’s here again, chief, waiting to talk to you.’

  ‘The aunt from Lisieux? Incidentally, how did she react?’

  ‘Like an old woman who loves other people’s funerals. No need for vinegar or smelling salts there. She coldly examined the body from head to toe. In the middle of her examination she gave a start, then asked, “Why have they shaved her?” I told her it wasn’t us, and she was stunned. She pointed out the birthmark on the sole of her foot. “You see! Even without that I’d still recognize her.” Then, as she was leaving, without asking my opinion, she announced, “I’m coming back with you. I have to talk to the detective chief inspector.” She’s in the outer room. I don’t think it’s going to be that easy getting rid of her.’

  Young Lapointe had just picked up the telephone and seemed to have a bad connection.

  ‘Is that Nice?’ Maigret asked.

  Lapointe nodded. Janvier wasn’t there. Maigret went back into his office and rang for the clerk to show in the old lady from Lisieux.

  ‘Apparently you’ve got something to say to me?’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ll be interested. I’ve been thinking as I went along. You know how it is. You can’t help but go over memories. Not that I’d want people to think me a gossip.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘It’s about Anne-Marie. I told you this morning that she left Lisieux four years ago and that her mother never once tried to find out what had become of her, which, between ourselves, strikes me as a monstrous way for a mother to behave.’

  He just had to wait. It would be pointless hurrying her.

  ‘People talked about it a great deal, naturally. Lisieux is a little town where everything comes out in the wash eventually. Well, a woman whom I trust implicitly and goes to Caen every week, where she has a share in a business, swore to me on her husband’s life that, not long after Anne-Marie left, she bumped into her in Caen just as the young girl was going into a doctor’s.’

  She paused with a self-satisfied air, but, to her surprise, Maigret didn’t ask her anything. With a sigh, she went on, ‘Well, it wasn’t just any old doctor, it was Doctor Potut, the obstetrician.’

  ‘In other words, you suspect your niece left town because she was pregnant?’

  ‘That’s the rumour that went round, and people asked themselves who the father might be.’

  ‘Did they find out?’

  ‘They named names, and they were nothing if not spoiled for choice. But I always had my own pet theory, and that’s why I’ve come back to see you. It’s my duty to help you discover the truth, isn’t it?’

  She was beginning to think the police were not as inquiring as they were made out to be, because Maigret wasn’t assisting her at all. He wasn’t urging her to speak, but listening as indifferently as an old confessor dozing behind his screen.

  She declared, as if it was of the utmost importance:

  ‘Anne-Marie always had a weak throat. She’d get a sore throat once every winter, if not more, and it didn’t get any better when she had her tonsils out. That year, I remember, my sister-in-law had the idea of taking her for a rest cure to La Bourbole, where they specialize in treating throat ailments.’

  Maigret remembered Arlette’s slightly hoarse voice, which he had put down to drinking, cigarettes and sleepless nights.

  ‘When she left Lisieux, her condition wasn’t showing yet, which suggests that she can’t have been more than three or four months pregnant. At the very most. Because she was still wearing very tight dresses. Well, that fits exactly with her stay at La Bourbole. I’d swear she met a man there who got her pregnant, and then she probably went off to be with him. If it had been someone from Lisieux, he would have got her to have an abortion or left town with her.’

  Maigret slowly lit his pipe. He felt aching and stiff, as if he’d walked a long way, but it was just nausea. As he had when Philippe was there, he would have liked to go over and open the window.

  ‘I suppose you’re going back?’

  ‘Not today. I’ll probably stay on a few days in Paris. I have some friends I can stay with. I’ll leave you their address.’

  It was near Boulevard Pasteur. The address was already filled out on the back of one of her visiting cards, complete with a telephone number.

  ‘You can call me if you need me.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I am entirely at your service.’

  ‘I have no doubt you are.’

  He led her back to the door without a smile, closed it slowly behind her, stretched and scratched his head with both hands, sighing quietly:

  ‘What a filthy bunch!’

  ‘Can I come in, chief?’

  It was Lapointe, who was holding a sheet of paper in his hand and seemed very excited.

  ‘Did you ring for some beer?’

  ‘The waiter from the Brasserie Dauphine has just brought up the tray.’

  It hadn’t been taken into Torrence’s box room yet, and Maigret took the cool, foaming glass and drained it in one long draught.

  ‘Just have to call and tell them to bring another!’

  7.

  ‘First I have to pass on young Julien’s respects and affection,’ Lapointe said, not without a hint of jealousy. ‘Apparently you’ll understand.’

  ‘Is he in Nice?’

  ‘He was transferred there from Limoges a few weeks ago.’

  He was the son of an old inspector who had worked with Maigret and retired to the Côte d’Azur. As it transpired, Maigret hadn’t seen young Julien pretty much since the days when he used to dandle him on his knee.

  ‘He’s who I rang yesterday evening,’ went on Lapointe, ‘and I’ve been in touch with him ever since. When he knew I was ringing on your behalf, the prospect of working for you seemed to energize him, and he was falling over backwards to help. He has spent hours in an attic in the police station, turning their old archives upside down. Apparently there’s a mass of bundles of paper tied up with string, case reports that everyone’s forgotten. They’re all jumbled together in a pile that almost reaches to the ceiling.’

  ‘Did he find the file for the Farnheim case?’

  ‘He’s just telephoned me with the list of witnesses who were interviewed after the count’s death. I especially asked him to get me the one of the servants who worked at The Oasis. I’ll read it to you:

  Antoinette Méjat, nineteen, maid.

  Rosalie Moncœur, forty-two, cook.

  Maria Pinaco, twenty-three, kitchen maid.

  Angelino Luppin, thirty-eight, butler.

  Maigret waited, standing near the window of his office and watching the snow, which was beginning to thin out. Lapointe paused in an actorly way:

  ‘Oscar Bonvoisin, thirty
-five, valet-chauffeur.’

  ‘An Oscar!’ said Maigret. ‘I suppose we don’t know what’s become of these people?’

  ‘Well, Inspector Julien had an idea. He hasn’t been in Nice for long, and he’s been struck by the number of wealthy foreigners who move there for a few months, rent largish houses and live in grand style. He thought to himself that they must have to find staff pretty much overnight. And, sure enough, he’s found an employment agency that specializes in domestic staff for big houses. It’s been run by the same old lady for over twenty years. She doesn’t remember Count von Farnheim or the countess. She doesn’t remember Oscar Bonvoisin either, but barely a year ago she found a position for the cook, who is one of her regulars. Rosalie Moncœur these days works for some South Americans who have a villa in Nice and spend part of the year in Paris. I’ve got their address: 132 Avenue d’Iéna. According to this lady, they should be in Paris now.’

  ‘Do we know anything about the others?’

  ‘Julien is still looking into it. Do you want me to go and see her, chief?’

  Maigret nearly said yes to please Lapointe, who was dying to question the Farnheims’ former cook.

  ‘I’ll go myself,’ he decided eventually.

  Primarily, if he was honest, this was because he wanted to get some fresh air, have another glass of beer and generally escape the atmosphere in his office, which he had found stifling all morning.

  ‘While I’m gone, go and check in Records that there’s nothing under Bonvoisin. You’ll need to check with the Hotel Agency too. Ring round the town halls and police stations.’

  ‘Fine, chief.’

  Poor Lapointe! Maigret felt remorse, but he wasn’t in any mood to give up his walk.

  Before leaving, he opened the door of the box room, where Torrence and Philippe were shut away. The heavy-set Torrence had taken off his jacket, but his forehead was still beaded with sweat. Perched on the edge of his chair, white as a sheet, Philippe looked as if he was about to faint.

  Maigret didn’t need to ask any questions. He knew Torrence wouldn’t give up and was prepared to keep going until it got dark, and all night if need be.

  Less than half an hour later, his taxi stopped in front of a sombre building on the Avenue d’Iéna, and a male concierge in a dark uniform greeted Maigret in a hall with marble columns.

  Maigret said who he was, asked if Rosalie Moncœur still worked in the building and was shown to the backstairs.