Maigret's Secret Page 11

  ‘Did she come to see you about three months ago?’

  ‘Why would she come and see me? I haven’t read the cards for ages.’

  ‘So you read cards too?’

  ‘So what? Everyone has to make a living somehow.’

  ‘She found herself pregnant, but after seeing you, she wasn’t any more.’

  ‘Who made that up? It’s a complete lie!’

  Janvier, who had accompanied his chief, searched all the drawers but found nothing, as Maigret had expected.

  ‘It’s important that we know what really happened. She didn’t come on her own. There was a man with her.’

  ‘It’s been years since a man set foot in my apartment.’

  She stuck to her guns. She knew the score. When they questioned the concierge of the building, she too denied ever seeing Annette or Josset.

  ‘Doesn’t Madame Malletier often receive young women?’

  ‘Before, when she read the cards, she’d have both old and young, and even a few gentlemen, who you wouldn’t think would go in for that sort of thing, but she hasn’t been doing that for a while now.’

  This was all fairly predictable. What wasn’t so predictable was the attitude of Annette when Maigret called her into Quai des Orfèvres. The first question was blunt and to the point:

  ‘How many weeks pregnant were you when you visited Madame Malletier in Rue Lepic?’

  Didn’t she know how to lie? Was she taken by surprise? Did she not realize the consequences of her answer?

  She blushed, looked around as if seeking help and gave Lapointe, who was again taking everything down in shorthand, a worried look.

  ‘I suppose I have to answer that?’

  ‘That would be best.’

  ‘Two months.’

  ‘Who gave you the address in Rue Lepic?’

  Maigret was a little irritated, for no good reason except perhaps that he thought she had given in a bit too easily. The concierge had played the game. The old abortionist too, of course, though she had every reason to do so.

  ‘Adrien.’

  ‘You told him you were pregnant, and he talked about an abortion?’

  ‘It didn’t happen quite like that. I had been fretting for six weeks, and he was constantly asking me what was bothering me. Once he even accused me of falling out of love with him. One evening, I asked him whether he knew of a midwife or a doctor who would be willing to …’

  ‘He didn’t protest?’

  ‘He was stunned. He asked me:

  ‘ “Are you sure?”

  ‘I told him yes, that I’d be showing soon, and that we had to do something about it.’

  ‘Did he know Madame Malletier?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. He told me to wait a few days and not do anything until he had decided.’

  ‘Decided what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Josset didn’t have any children with his wife. Was he moved by the thought that Annette might give him a son or a daughter?

  Maigret, to set his mind at rest, would have liked to question him on this point and one or two others, but Coméliau was taking care of all the interrogations from now on, and he didn’t see things from the same point of view.

  ‘Do you think he was tempted to make you keep the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he talk to you about it?’

  ‘For a week he was more caring, paid me more attention.’

  ‘Wasn’t he normally caring?’

  ‘He was kind, loving, but that’s not the same thing.’

  ‘Do you think he talked to his wife about it?’

  She gave a start.

  ‘His wife!’

  It was as if she was afraid of Christine, even though she was dead.

  ‘Surely he wouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know … A man doesn’t tell his wife he is expecting a child by another woman.’

  ‘Was he scared of her?’

  ‘He didn’t hide from her. When I advised him to be careful, to not broadcast our relationship, for example, by being seen in restaurants, he told me she was in the picture and wouldn’t do anything to him.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘Not totally. It didn’t seem possible to me.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Christine Josset?’

  ‘Several times.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the office.’

  ‘You mean in her husband’s office?’

  ‘Yes. I worked there too. When she came to Avenue Marceau …’

  ‘Did she drop by often?’

  ‘Two or three times a month.’

  ‘To see her husband, to pick him up?’

  ‘No. Mainly to see Monsieur Jules. She was chair of the board.’

  ‘Was she actively involved in the business?’

  ‘Not actively. She kept in touch, asked to see the accounts, to have certain things explained to her.’

  It was a side of Christine that no one had talked about.

  ‘I suppose she was curious about you?’

  ‘In the beginning, yes. The very first time, she looked me over from head to toe, shrugged her shoulders and said to her husband:

  ‘ “Not bad …” ’

  ‘Did she already know?’

  ‘Adrien had filled her in.’

  ‘Did she ever talk to you one-to-one? Did you get the impression she was afraid of you?’

  ‘Of me? Why would she be afraid of me?’

  ‘If her husband had told her you were expecting a baby.’

  ‘That would have made a difference, of course. But I would never have allowed him to tell her. Not just because of her, but because of others too.’

  ‘Your colleagues?’

  ‘Everyone. Also my father.’

  ‘What happened at the end of the week?’

  ‘One morning, in the office, before we opened the mail, he whispered to me quickly:

  ‘ “I’ve got an address. We have an appointment for this evening.”

  ‘That evening, as we left the office, he didn’t drive me straight back to Rue Caulaincourt. He left the car at Boulevard de Clichy as a precaution, and we went on foot to Rue Lepic.’

  ‘You weren’t tempted to change your mind?’

  ‘The old woman frightened me, but I had made my decision.’

  ‘And him?’

  ‘After a minute or two, he went out into the street to wait for me.’

  Maigret passed on his report to Coméliau, as required. Was there then a leak from the magistrate’s chambers? Coméliau wasn’t the type to disseminate information of this nature. Was Lenain, who had been informed in a professional capacity, the one who was indiscreet? But publicity of this type was not in his client’s interests, and although he committed many blunders, that surely wasn’t one of them.

  Most likely the person who had written the anonymous letter, annoyed that nothing had come of it, had taken the story to the papers, who conducted their own investigation.

  Madame Malletier, who still denied everything, had been arrested, and the story was once again splashed over all the front pages.

  Coméliau had been obliged to arrest the young woman too, but he later released her on bail.

  JOSSET ACCUSED OF A SECOND CRIME ALONG WITH HIS MISTRESS

  When Annette was mentioned it was always in terms of pity; the full responsibility was laid at the door of her lover.

  From one day to the next a palpable climate of hatred built up around him. Even those who had been his closest friends were reluctant to talk about him and tended to play down their relationship with him.

  ‘I knew him like everyone else … It was Christine I was really friends with … An extraordinary woman!’

  She showed extraordinary vitality, certainly. But what happened afterwards?

  ‘She deserved better than him.’

  When pushed, they were unable to say exactly what she deserved. As far
as anyone could tell, she was made to lead her own life, according to her own rules.

  ‘For a while he had been her great love. No one knew why, since Josset was no Don Juan. Besides, he was a bit of a weakling.’

  It seemed to cross no one’s mind that Christine was more than capable of crushing this weakling.

  ‘Didn’t she love him any more?’

  ‘They lived more and more separate lives. Especially after he fell for that typist.’

  ‘Did it cause her pain?’

  ‘It was difficult to tell exactly what Christine was feeling. She played her cards close to her chest.’

  ‘Even when it came to lovers?’

  They would give Maigret a look of reproach, as if he wasn’t playing the game by the rules.

  ‘She liked to help young people, didn’t she?’

  ‘She went to lots of arts events.’

  ‘She took a few under her wing, as they say?’

  ‘She helped young artists now and then.’

  ‘Could you give me an example?’

  ‘It’s not easy. She was tactful enough not to make a big deal about it. She once, I recall, helped a young painter, particularly by bringing friends and journalists she knew along to his debut exhibition.’

  ‘His name?’

  ‘I can’t remember … An Italian, I think.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  As time went on, the reticence became more and more concerted.

  Maître Lenain, for his part, having rashly dropped his ‘bombshell’, was now trying to draw up a list of the so-called protégés whose existence he had so publicly proclaimed. Maigret didn’t realize that he was being aided by a private detective agency run by one of his former inspectors. They had a freer rein than the Police Judiciaire and didn’t have Coméliau on their backs all the time.

  In spite of this he didn’t turn up anything specific. He telephoned Maigret to tell him about a certain Daunard, a former hotel doorman from Deauville, who was now a singer in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

  Although he wasn’t yet known to the wider public, he was starting to appear in cabarets on the Right Bank and was soon to make his music hall debut at the Bobino.

  Maigret went to see him at his hotel room in Rue de Ponthieu. He was a tall, well-built young man, rough around the edges and a bit macho, like certain young American film stars. It was two o’clock in the afternoon, and he was still in crumpled pyjamas when he opened his door to Maigret. There was a woman entangled in his bedsheets, visible only by her blonde hair.

  ‘Maigret, yeah?’

  He had been anticipating this visit. He lit a cigarette and adopted the pose of a movie hard man.

  ‘I could refuse to let you in unless you have a warrant. Do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you should call me into your office.’

  Maigret was in no mood to discuss the legal niceties.

  ‘I should warn you I’ve got nothing to say.’

  ‘Did you know Christine Josset?’

  ‘So what? There are thousands of people in Paris who knew her.’

  ‘Did you know her intimately?’

  ‘One, that’s none of your business. Two, if you look hard enough, you’ll find dozens of young men who have slept with her. And when I say dozens …’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘A good year ago. And if you are making out that she was the one who launched my career, you’re wrong. When I was back in Deauville the owner of a club in Saint-Germain spotted me and gave me his card. He told me to come and look him up in Paris.’

  The woman in his bed pulled the sheet down a few centimetres so that she could take a squint at what was going on.

  ‘Don’t worry, honey. I’ve got nothing to fear from these gentlemen. I can prove that on the night that Madame Christine was stiffed, I was down in Marseille. You’ll even find my name in large letters on the poster at the Miramar.’

  ‘Did you know any of the others?’

  ‘Which others?’

  ‘Other friends of Madame Josset’s.’

  ‘What, do you think we were some sort of club? We should have worn a badge or something, then, shouldn’t we?’

  He was terribly pleased with himself. His girlfriend was shaking with laughter under the sheet.

  ‘Anything else I can do for you? If you don’t mind, I have better things to do. That’s right, isn’t it, honey?’

  There were surely others of the same type, or different, who evidently didn’t want to make themselves known. The painter who was mentioned now lived in Brittany, where he painted seascapes, and there was nothing to suggest that he had come to Paris at the time of the murder.

  A separate line of inquiry involving taxi-drivers had not thrown up anything either. Yet it is unusual, given enough time, not to find the driver who had done a particular trip.

  Several inspectors had divided up the companies, the taxi stands and the owner-drivers between them.

  They asked all of them if they had dropped off anyone in Rue Lopert on the evening of the crime, but that drew a blank. All they found out was that a couple who lived three doors down from the Jossets had taken a taxi home from the theatre and had arrived just before midnight.

  Neither the driver nor the couple could remember seeing any lights in the glass house at that time.

  There was one slight benefit of the taxi being there at that time, and that was that the old man, who claimed that he hadn’t missed any of the comings and goings in the street, had failed to mention this particular car. Yet the car had parked there for two or three minutes, with its engine running, because the passenger didn’t have enough change and had to go into the house to get some more money.

  They had shown Martin Duché’s photo to thousands of drivers, especially those who usually parked in the Caulaincourt area. They had all seen it in the newspapers. According to Annette, her father had left around 9.30 in the evening. He apparently hadn’t returned to his hotel near Gare d’Austerlitz before midnight; later, the night clerk couldn’t remember seeing him come back in at all.

  What had the head clerk from Fontenay-le-Comte been doing all this time?

  Here they drew a complete blank. None of the drivers could recall picking him up, even though he had a very distinctive face and figure.

  Might he have tried to see Josset again, to ask him for an explanation, and to repeat the promise he had made?

  Annette had admitted that he wasn’t in his normal state of mind. Normally abstemious, he had been drinking heavily.

  Even if the scene in Rue Caulaincourt had ended peacefully and in apparent agreement, it would have shaken him nonetheless.

  Yet it seemed that no taxi had taken him to Rue Lopert, or indeed anywhere else.

  No one had noticed him in the Métro station either, but given the volume of people passing through, that proved nothing.

  Then there were the buses, where he could have equally passed unnoticed.

  Was he the sort of person who would sneak inside Josset’s house? Wouldn’t he have rung the bell? Did he find the door open?

  And is it conceivable that, in a place he didn’t know, he could have crossed the living room in the dark, gone upstairs and entered Christine’s room?

  The murderer, assuming it wasn’t the husband, had worn gloves. Or else he had brought with him a weapon solid enough to inflict the wounds that Doctor Paul had described, or used the commando knife that was in Adrien’s room.

  But who, apart from people familiar to the couple, would know that that dagger was there? Then it would have to be admitted that, having committed the crime, the unknown murderer had cleaned the weapon, leaving no trace on any cloth, as Josset had not seen any blood on the knife.

  The public were well aware of these things that didn’t add up, as the journalists were very clever in dissecting all the possible hypotheses in the minutest detail. One had even published an article with the arguments for and the arguments against in two facing colum
ns.

  Maigret went to Avenue Marceau for the first time, to the turn-of-the-century town-house that had been converted into offices.

  Apart from the switchboard and a small room where visitors left their cards and filled out a short form, the ground floor, with its panelled walls and moulded ceilings, was only used as a showroom.

  The various products of Josset et Virieu were exhibited in glass cases, and there were medical diagrams and doctors’ certificates in expensive frames. Finally, laid out on huge oak tables were a number of medical publications that helped to sell the firm’s products.

  It was Monsieur Jules that Maigret had come to see on this occasion. He had already found out that Jules was not his first name but his surname, so people didn’t call him that out of familiarity.

  A bright, almost empty room where two typists worked separated his office from that of Josset, which was the biggest in the firm, with tall windows overlooking the trees along the avenue.

  Monsieur Jules was a man of sixty-five, with bushy eyebrows and dark hairs protruding from his nostrils and ears. He reminded Maigret of Martin Duché, only less docile. Like him, he was the very epitome of the faithful servant.

  In fact, he was in the firm long before Josset came along, when old Virieu was still around, and although his job title was officially head of personnel, he also had oversight of other departments too.

  Maigret wanted to talk to him about Christine.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself, Monsieur Jules. I’m just passing through and, to be honest, I’m not even sure what it is I want to ask you. I just happened to find out that Madame Josset is the chair of your board.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Is it just an honorary title or did she take an active interest in the running of the company?’

  He could already sense the reticence he had encountered everywhere else. Isn’t it precisely to head this off that it is so important in a criminal investigation to move quickly?

  Madame Maigret knew that as well as anyone, as she often saw her husband come home in the early hours of the morning, that is if he wasn’t out for several nights in a row.

  When people read the papers they form instant opinions and even when they think they are being sincere and honest, they tend to distort the truth.

  ‘She really got involved in the business. She had a substantial stake in it, after all.’