Maigret and the Saturday Caller Page 10

  The older Prou was distrustful too. Maigret held out the phone to the son.

  ‘Yeah, it’s me, Papa. Recognize my voice? Good. You can go ahead and answer the questions he’s asking … No! It’s just a formality. I’ll explain later. See you soon, yes … Yeah, everything’s fine … Yes, he’s gone away. Not now. I’ll be round Sunday.’

  He handed back the receiver.

  ‘So, Monsieur Prou, can you now reply to my question? You lent him a million … Good, fine. In cash? You took it out of the bank the day before? … From the Savings Bank? … Yes, I can hear you. And your son, he signed a receipt, did he? … Thank you very much. Yes, someone will call round to check, normal procedure. You just need to show him the receipt. One moment. When was this? Christmas Eve?’

  Prou’s eyes glared more than ever with scornful irony.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to call my brother-in-law now?’

  ‘There’s no hurry. I’m quite sure he’ll confirm what you say.’

  ‘Can I go, then?’

  ‘Unless you want to make a statement.’

  ‘What statement?’

  ‘I don’t know. You might have some idea where Planchon went when he left the house. He doesn’t seem to be very strong. And he was also drunk. Lugging two big cases, he can’t have got very far.’

  ‘Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? Or are you expecting me to find him for you?’

  ‘No, I’m not asking you to do that. Merely, if you do have any idea, to let me know, to save time.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask Planchon himself when you saw him, or when he phoned you? He’s better placed than me to give you an answer.’

  ‘Curiously enough, he had no plans to leave Rue Tholozé.’

  ‘That’s what he told you?’

  Prou was the one now asking leading questions.

  ‘He told me a lot of things.’

  ‘He came here?’

  In spite of his calm demeanour, Prou was showing slight signs of anxiety. Maigret took care not to reply, but looked at the other man with his most neutral expression, as if he had ceased to attach any importance to the interview.

  ‘One thing surprises me,’ he said, however.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know whether he still loved his wife, or whether he had started to hate her.’

  ‘I suppose that depended on the moment.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘On how drunk he was. Different times of day, he wasn’t the same man. Sometimes we’d lie awake listening to him grunting away in the next room, wondering whether he was planning some nasty surprise.’

  ‘What kind of surprise?’

  ‘Do I have to draw a picture? I’ll tell you something else. I always made sure to be working on the same job as him, so as to keep an eye on him. If during the day he showed any sign of wanting to go back to the house, I’d go with him. I was afraid for Renée.’

  ‘You really think he’d have been capable of killing her?’

  ‘Well, he’d threatened her.’

  ‘With death?’

  ‘Not in so many words, perhaps. But when he’d been drinking, he would talk to himself with a sort of knowing tone. I couldn’t tell you exactly what he said, it was always a bit incoherent, like this:

  ‘ “So I’m just a coward … All right! Everyone makes fun of me … But one day they’ll sing a different tune …”

  ‘See the kind of thing? And his eyes would light up in a nasty way. He’d make like he understood himself exactly. And he might suddenly burst out laughing.

  ‘ “Poor old Planchon! Poor little feller, a nobody … With a face that disgusts people. Ha! But perhaps the poor little feller isn’t as cowardly as all that!” ’

  Maigret listened attentively, with a tight feeling in his chest, because this did not sound as if Prou was making it up. He’d seen Planchon in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir and the man that Prou was now imitating with cruel sarcasm, the Planchon of Rue Tholozé, was recognizably the same person, barely exaggerated.

  ‘You think he really meant to kill his wife?’

  ‘I’m sure he thought of it, it was an idea he got into his head regularly, when he was far gone drinking.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Yeah, me too perhaps.’

  ‘And his daughter?’

  ‘Oh, he probably wouldn’t have touched Isabelle. Still, suppose he’d got a bomb and blown up the whole house …’

  Maigret got up with a sigh and walked towards the window indecisively.

  ‘And the same idea had never occurred to you?’

  ‘Of killing Renée?’

  ‘No, not her, him!’

  ‘That’d have been the quickest way to get rid of him, right enough. But perhaps you’ll believe me when I say if I was going to do that, I wouldn’t have waited two whole years. Have you got any idea what it’s been like for us the last two years, with that man always there, being a nuisance?’

  ‘But what about for him?’

  ‘He should have got the message earlier and gone away. When a woman doesn’t love you any more, when she’s fallen for someone else, and tells you so frankly, then you know what you’ve got to do.’

  He had stood up as well. He’d lost a little of his poise, his voice had become more vehement.

  ‘But even now, he’s still blighting our lives, because you go questioning Renée in the house, you’ve had my workmen in here, and for the last hour you’ve been trying to get me to say God knows what. Anything else you want to ask? Am I still a free man? Can I go?’

  ‘Yes, you can go.’

  ‘Goodbye, then.’

  And he went out, slamming the door.

  7.

  That evening, Maigret was able to watch television, wrapped up warm, wearing his slippers, with his wife at his side doing her knitting, but he would have preferred to change places with Janvier and Lapointe, who were just then doing the rounds of the Montmartre he knew so well, walking through streets familiar to him, each of them entering one café or bistro after another, moving from yellow lamplight to a brighter glare, from old-fashioned décor to modern fittings, from the smell of beer to the smell of calvados.

  He had of course been glad of promotion, rising in the end to the top job of detective chief inspector, in charge of the Serious Crime Squad. He still retained nevertheless a nostalgia for certain assignments, even if it meant shivering on a winter’s night, for the concierges’ lodges that all smelled different, and that you might visit for days on end asking the same, apparently futile questions.

  Wasn’t it true that in high places he was still criticized for being too willing to leave his office and go out in person on a job that was really one for a bloodhound? How could he explain, especially to the prosecutor’s office, that he needed to see, to smell, to absorb the atmosphere of a case?

  As if to mock him, the television that evening was showing a tragedy by Corneille. Kings and warriors in costume on the small screen, declaiming noble lines of verse that reminded him of schooldays, and it was a strange sensation to be interrupted every half-hour or so by the telephone, then to hear the voice of Janvier, who always called in first, telling him in much less declamatory tones:

  ‘I think I’m on the right track, chief. I’m calling from a bar in the Rue Germain-Pilon, couple of hundred metres from Place des Abbesses. It’s called Au Bon Coin. The owner’s already gone to bed, his wife’s serving at the counter then going back to sit by the stove. I just had to mention the man with the hare-lip and she remembered him:

  ‘ “Has something happened to him?” she asked.

  ‘He came here often, apparently, about eight in the evening, for a couple of drinks. The cat liked him and would go and rub against his legs, for him to stroke it …

  ‘It’s a little bar, dim lighting, dark paint. I don’t know why it’s open in the evening at all, because the only customer’s an old man sipping a grog by the window.’

  ‘Has she seen Planchon since Monday?�
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  ‘No, she’s almost sure the last time he was in was Monday. Just yesterday she said to her husband that she hadn’t seen the man with the hare-lip and wondered if he was ill.’

  ‘And he never told her anything about himself?’

  ‘Hardly spoke at all. She felt sorry for him, because he seemed sad, and she tried to cheer him up.’

  ‘Keep on searching, then.’

  Janvier would be going back out into the cold and the dark, and later he would walk into another café, another bar. Lapointe was doing the same elsewhere.

  As for Maigret, he returned to Corneille’s characters on screen and to his wife, who was looking at him questioningly from her armchair.

  At half past nine, it was Lapointe’s turn. He was calling from Rue Lepic, from another bar, bigger and better lit, where the regulars were playing cards and where Planchon had been seen.

  ‘Always had his cognac, chief … Here, they knew who he was, that he lived up on Rue Tholozé, because they’d seen him go past driving a van with his name on it in big letters. They all felt sorry for him. By the time he got here, he was generally well on the way to being drunk. Never spoke to a soul. One of the card players remembered the last time he came was Monday night. He ate two hardboiled eggs from the basket on the counter.’

  Janvier must have chosen the wrong trail to follow, since when he next telephoned he had inquired in five bistros, but the man with the hare-lip had not been seen in any of them.

  And Corneille’s heroes had been replaced by singers on the television screen when, at about eleven o’clock, Lapointe phoned again, sounding excited.

  ‘Something new to report, chief. I wonder whether we hadn’t better meet up at Quai des Orfèvres? There’s a woman here I’m watching from the phone booth, because I don’t want her to slip away.

  ‘I’m in a brasserie on Place Blanche. The terrace has glass round it and braziers heating it. Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes. I’m listening.’

  ‘The first waiter I talked to knew Planchon well by sight. Seems he would turn up late in the evening and by then he wasn’t too steady on his legs. He’d sit on the terrace and order a beer.’

  ‘Probably to chase all those cognacs from other bars.’

  ‘I don’t know if you know this place? There are two or three women always on the terrace, and they watch the passers-by. They work mostly when the show is over at the cinema next door.

  ‘The waiter pointed to one of the women, and said:

  ‘ “You could ask Clémentine, over there. She might know more than me. I’ve seen her go off with him a few times.”

  ‘She guessed at once I was from the police, and at first she wasn’t giving anything away. She just kept asking:

  ‘ “What’s he done? Why are you looking for him? What makes you think I know him?”

  ‘After a bit, she did consent to talk, and I think what she said would interest you. In fact, I think it’d be a good idea to get a statement from her in writing, while she’s still willing. What shall I do?’

  ‘Take her to the Police Judiciaire. I’ll get there about the same time as you.’

  Madame Maigret, looking resigned, was already fetching his outdoor shoes.

  ‘Shall I call a taxi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He put on his overcoat, not forgetting a scarf, having swallowed another grog, since he was still sure he was sickening, perhaps for flu.

  At Quai des Orfèvres, he greeted the solitary clerk at the desk, went up the broad, grey, ill-lit staircase, found the corridor empty, switched the light on in one room and pushed the door of the inspectors’ office. Lapointe, hat still on his head, was there, and a woman who had been sitting in a chair stood up.

  At this hour of the night, all over Paris, hundreds of women who could have been her sisters were walking the streets in the dark, not far away from furnished lodgings with discreetly open doors.

  She was wearing extremely high heels and her legs were slender, indeed the entire lower half of her body was long and thin. Only from the hips upwards did she carry any weight, and the disproportion was the more striking since she was wearing a short fur jacket, made of something like long-haired goatskin.

  Her cheeks were rosy pink and her sooty eyelashes were like a doll’s.

  ‘Mademoiselle was good enough to come with me,’ Lapointe said gallantly.

  And she replied, sarcastically but without malice:

  ‘As if you couldn’t have carted me down here anyway …’

  She seemed impressed by the inspector, looking him up and down.

  Taking off his coat, Maigret motioned to her to sit down again. Lapointe had taken his place at a typewriter, ready to take her statement.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Antoinette Lesourd. But they mostly call me Sylvie. Antoinette’s a bit old-fashioned, it was my grandmother’s name and …’

  ‘And you knew Planchon?’

  ‘I didn’t know his name. He used to come nearly every night to the brasserie, and he was usually pretty far gone. I thought at first he was a widower drowning his sorrows. He looked so sad.’

  ‘Did he address you first?’

  ‘No, it was me. And the first time, I thought he was going to run away. So I said:

  ‘ “You know, I’ve got my problems too. I know what it’s like. I married a good-for-nothing who ran off one day with my little girl.”

  ‘It was when I mentioned my daughter that he perked up a bit.’

  Turning to Lapointe, she said:

  ‘You’re not going to write all this down?’

  ‘Just the essentials,’ Maigret intervened. ‘How long is it since you first met him?’

  ‘Few months? Let’s see, I went to work in Cannes in the summer when the Yankee fleet was in. Got back here in September. Must’ve met him beginning of October.’

  ‘And he went back with you the first evening?’

  ‘No, he bought me a drink. Then he said he had to go home to get up early for work and it was late now. It wasn’t till two or three days later that he came back with me.’

  ‘To your place?’

  ‘Oh, no, I never take anyone home. My concierge wouldn’t let me. It’s a respectable house. There’s a magistrate even, lives on the first floor. So I go to this little hotel in Rue Lepic … You know it? … Now, don’t go causing trouble for them. With all the new regulations, you don’t know where you are these days.’

  ‘And did Planchon often go there with you?’

  ‘No, not often. Maybe a dozen times all told, and sometimes, even then, nothing happened.’

  ‘Did he talk to you?’

  ‘Once he said:

  ‘ “You see, they’re right, I’m not even a real man.” ’

  ‘He didn’t give you any details about his home life?’

  ‘I’d noticed his wedding ring, of course. One night I asked him:

  ‘ “Is it your wife that’s giving you all this grief?”

  ‘And he said that his wife hadn’t deserved to end up with a man like him.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  From the glance Lapointe directed at him, Maigret realized he was reaching the interesting point.

  ‘Monday night.’

  ‘How can you be sure it was Monday?’

  ‘Because next day, I was picked up by your people, and I was twenty-four hours down the cells. You can ask your colleagues. My name’ll be on the list. They carted off a whole vanload of us.’

  ‘What time was it on Monday when he came into the brasserie?’

  ‘Not quite ten. I’d only just come out, because in Montmartre there’s no point starting earlier.’

  ‘How did he seem?’

  ‘He could hardly stand up. I saw at once he’d drunk more than usual. He came and sat by me at the terrace, near the heater. He was trying to lift his arm to call the waiter and he was stuttering:

  ‘ “A c-cognac … and one for m-madame too.”


  ‘We almost had a row. I didn’t want him to have any more alcohol the state he was in, but he just wouldn’t give in.

  ‘ “I’m sick,” he said. “I need a good big cognac to put me right.” ’

  ‘And he didn’t say anything else that struck you particularly?’

  Another glance from Lapointe.

  ‘Yes, something I didn’t understand, he said it a few times:

  ‘ “He doesn’t believe me either!” ’

  ‘He didn’t explain?’

  ‘No, he just muttered:

  ‘ “Never mind, I know what I mean. And one day you will too.” ’

  Maigret remembered the tone of voice in which Planchon, just a few hours earlier that Monday evening, had spoken to him over the phone, when he was still in the bar on Place des Abbesses.

  ‘Well, thank you, anyway.’

  He had sensed not only bitterness and disillusion, but also something like a threat.

  ‘And you went back together to the hotel?’

  ‘He wanted to. But when we got outside, he fell flat on his face on the pavement. I helped him get up. He was ashamed, humiliated. He kept groaning:

  ‘ “I’ll soon show ’em I’m a man.”

  ‘I had to prop him up. I knew the hotel owner wouldn’t let him in in that state and anyway I didn’t want him being sick in the bedroom. So I asked him: “Where do you live?”

  ‘ “Up there …”

  ‘ “Up where?”

  ‘ “Rue Tholo …”

  ‘ “Rue Tholo?”

  ‘Well, he could hardly get it out. “Rue Tholozé?” I said.

  ‘ “Yes, right up … right up …”

  ‘It’s not much fun when this happens, I can tell you. I was scared a cop might see us and think I was going to swindle him out of his money. They’d have said it was me got him drunk, you can bet on that. Not wanting to be rude about the police, but you have to admit there are times …’

  ‘Go on. So you called a taxi?’

  ‘Not on your life! I was stony broke! I helped him walk, and we took half an hour to get up to the top of Rue Tholozé, because he kept stopping, his legs were folding under him, and he kept saying every time we went past a bar that another big cognac would sort him out. In the end, he stopped by a gate, and then he fell over again. The gate wasn’t shut. There was a van in the yard with a name on, don’t know what it was, it was dark. I only let go of him when we got to the door.’