Maigret's Secret Page 12

  ‘One-third of the capital, unless I am mistaken?’

  ‘A third of the shares, yes, with another third staying in the hands of Monsieur Virieu and the other third for the last few years in the possession of her husband.’

  ‘I’ve been told that she came to see you two or three times a month.’

  ‘Not as regularly as that. She dropped by from time to time, not just to see me but also to see the chief executive and sometimes the head of accounts.’

  ‘Did she know what was what?’

  ‘She had a very good head for business. She speculated on the Stock Exchange on her own account, and I don’t mind saying she made some tidy profits.’

  ‘In your opinion, did she have doubts about her husband’s way of running the business?’

  ‘Not just about her husband in particular, but everyone.’

  ‘Did her attitude make enemies?’

  ‘Everyone has enemies.’

  ‘Did she have any in this firm? Did she have to take measures against any individuals?’

  Monsieur Jules scratched his nose, a malicious look in his eye, not the slightest bit embarrassed but somewhat hesitant.

  ‘Have you studied how large companies organize themselves and their staff, inspector? As long as there are competing personal interests and departments working to different agendas, it’s inevitable that cliques form.’

  The same was true of Quai des Orfèvres, as Maigret knew only too well.

  ‘Were there cliques here in this firm?’

  ‘Probably still are.’

  ‘May I ask you which one you belonged to?’

  Monsieur Jules frowned, became more sombre and stared at his pigskin desk accoutrements.

  ‘I was completely devoted to Madame Josset,’ he said finally, carefully weighing his words.

  ‘And her husband?’

  At that, he got up and went to check that no one was listening behind the door.

  8. Madame Maigret’s Coq au Vin

  It was the Maigrets’ turn to host their friends at Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and Madame Maigret had been cooking all day amid a symphony of various noises, for the season of wide-open windows had begun, and the life of Paris blew into the apartments on the currents of air.

  Alice hadn’t come along, and it was her mother, this time, who listened out for the telephone, because at any moment they were expecting the young woman to be rushed into the clinic to give birth.

  Once dinner was over, the table cleared and coffee served, Maigret offered the doctor a cigar, while the two women whispered together in a corner, and Madame Pardon was heard to say:

  ‘I really don’t know how you do it.’

  She was talking about the coq au vin they had had for dinner. She went on:

  ‘There is that subtle aftertaste which really sets it apart, I can’t quite identify what it is.’

  ‘It’s actually quite simple. I presume you normally add a dash of cognac at the last moment?’

  ‘Cognac, armagnac, whatever I have to hand.’

  ‘Well, I know it’s not orthodox, but I use Alsatian plum brandy. That’s my secret.’

  During dinner, Maigret had been in a good mood.

  ‘Busy?’ Pardon asked him.

  ‘Very.’

  Which was true, but it was fun work.

  ‘I’m living in the middle of a circus!’

  For a while there had been a series of burglaries that could only have been committed by a professional acrobat, probably a male or female contortionist, and so Maigret and his colleagues had been spending their days from morning to night in the world of the circus and the music hall, and had seen the most extraordinary array of people passing through Quai des Orfèvres.

  They were dealing with a new arrival who used new methods, which happens more rarely than you might think. So routines had to be relearned from scratch, and the Crime Squad was a hotbed of excitement.

  ‘Last month you didn’t have time to finish your story about the Josset case,’ Doctor Pardon murmured, once he had settled into his chair with a drink by his side.

  He never had more than one, but he drank it in small sips, swilling it round his mouth so as to better appreciate the bouquet.

  At the mention of the murder in Rue Lopert, a different expression came over the inspector’s face.

  ‘I can’t remember where I got to … From the start I had guessed that Coméliau wouldn’t give me the chance to see Josset again, and that’s how it turned out. He was so possessive of him you might almost say he was jealous.

  ‘The case was built within the four walls of his chambers, and the police didn’t know anything more about it than what was printed in the papers.

  ‘For nearly two months, ten of my men, sometimes more, were bogged down in fact-checking.

  ‘Our investigation worked on different levels simultaneously. Firstly, on a purely technical level, we reconstructed the movements of each person on the night of the crime, searched the house in Rue Lopert twenty times over, hoping to find a clue that we had missed before, including the famous commando knife.

  ‘I don’t know how many times I questioned the two servants, the tradesmen, the neighbours. And our task was complicated by the flow of letters, both anonymous and signed, but mainly anonymous, which we couldn’t ignore.

  ‘It always happens when a case stirs up public opinion.

  ‘Cranks, crackpots, people who have had a grudge against their neighbour for years or simply people who think they know something – they all get in touch with the police, who have then to separate the fact from the fiction.

  ‘I went to Fontenay-le-Comte in secret, almost under false pretences, but found nothing, as I think I already told you.

  ‘You see, Pardon, once a crime is committed, nothing is straightforward any more. There are ten or maybe twenty people whose actions may have seemed perfectly normal a few hours earlier but now have to be scrutinized in a more suspicious light.

  ‘Everything is possible!

  ‘No hypothesis can be ruled out as ridiculous. Nor is there any infallible method for being sure of the witnesses’ good faith or powers of recall.

  ‘The public follows its gut instinct, driven by emotion and only the most elementary reasoning.

  ‘As for us, we have the duty to doubt everything, to look everywhere, to consider every possible explanation.

  ‘So, Rue Lopert on the one hand, Avenue Marceau on the other.

  ‘I knew nothing about the pharmaceutical industry, so I had to learn how this business worked. With all its laboratories and more than 300 staff.

  ‘And, based on a few conversations, what to make of Monsieur Jules and the way his mind operated?

  ‘And he wasn’t the only one who played a significant role in Avenue Marceau. There was Virieu, the son of the firm’s founder, then the heads of the various departments, the technical advisers, doctors, pharmacists, chemists …

  ‘All these people divided into two main camps, which for the sake of argument we might call the ancients and the moderns. The former thought that the company should concentrate on prescription drugs only; the latter wanted to produce lucrative products that could be marketed through publicity campaigns in the papers and on the radio.’

  Pardon murmured:

  ‘I’m not unfamiliar with that debate.’

  ‘It seems that Josset had a natural inclination towards the former, but let himself be pushed against his will into the second category.

  ‘Though not without putting up a struggle.’

  ‘What about his wife?’

  ‘She was the leader of the moderns. Under pressure from her, a sales director had been fired two months earlier, a valued employee who had good links with their medical clients and was a sworn enemy of all-purpose medicines.

  ‘All this created a climate of intrigue, suspicion and probably mutual loathing at Avenue Marceau and in Saint-Mandé … But that didn’t get me anywhere.

  ‘We couldn’t examine every aspect in
depth at the same time. Mostly our officers are engaged in existing casework, even when something sensational comes along.

  ‘I’ve never felt our inherent weakness so keenly. At a time when we needed to understand the lives of a dozen, maybe as many as thirty, individuals about whom we knew nothing the day before, I had only a handful of men at my disposal.

  ‘They were being asked to probe into areas with which they weren’t familiar and, in a ridiculously short space of time, form an opinion.

  ‘But in court the words of a witness, a concierge, a taxi-driver, a neighbour, a man in the street might have more weight than all the sworn testimonies and denials of the accused.

  ‘For two months I toiled with an acute sense of my own impotence, yet I carried on, hoping against hope for a miracle.

  ‘Adrien Josset continued to profess his innocence, despite being increasingly presumed guilty. His lawyer continued to make reckless statements to the press.

  ‘I counted fifty-three anonymous letters, which led us to every corner of Paris and its suburbs. We even had to send letters of request outside of Paris.

  ‘Some people had thought they had seen Martin Duché in Auteuil during the night, and there was even a female vagrant near Pont Mirabeau who claimed that Annette’s father had made drunken advances to her.

  ‘Others named young men they considered to be Christine Josset’s protégés.

  ‘We followed every lead, even the unlikely ones, and each evening I sent a report to Coméliau, who flicked through it with a shrug of his shoulders.

  ‘One of the young men who were pointed out to us was called Popaul. The anonymous letter said:

  ‘ “You will find him at the Bar de la Lune, Rue de Charonne, where everyone knows him, but they won’t say a thing because they all have something to hide.”

  ‘The writer of the letter provided details and said that Christine Josset liked slumming it and that she had met Popaul on several occasions in a rented room near Canal Saint-Martin.

  ‘ “She had bought him a 4CV, but that didn’t prevent Popaul from beating her on numerous occasions and extorting money from her.” ’

  Maigret went himself to Rue de Charonne, and the bistro mentioned in the letter was indeed a den of villains who made themselves scarce when he turned up. He questioned the owner, the waitress and then, in the following days, the regulars, whom he had some difficulty pinning down.

  ‘Popaul? Never heard of him.’

  The innocence was rather forced. If they were to be believed, no one knew this Popaul, and he would have no more joy asking in the boarding houses along the canal.

  At the car licensing centre they hadn’t found any useful information. Several recent owners of 4CVs had the name Paul. They tracked down a few, but four or five had left Paris.

  As for Christine’s friends, they all maintained the same polite silence. Christine was a charming woman, a sweetheart, a darling, a remarkable woman.

  Madame Maigret had taken Madame Pardon into the kitchen to show her God knows what, then the two women, in order to leave the men in peace, had settled down in the dining room. Maigret, who had removed his jacket, was smoking a meerschaum pipe he only ever used at home.

  ‘The Grand Jury was appointed, and so our work was officially over. We were busy with other cases during the summer. The newspapers announced that Josset had suffered from depression and had been transferred to the hospital at the Santé, where he was being treated for a stomach ulcer.

  ‘That raised a few smiles, since it was something of a tradition for the better class of prisoner to fall ill as soon as they got put in jail.

  ‘When, after the summer recess, he appeared on the witness stand, he had clearly lost twenty kilos and was not the man he once was. His clothes hung off his thin frame, his eyes were sunken in their sockets, and for all his lawyer put on a show to both witnesses and the public, he seemed somewhat indifferent to what was going on around him.

  ‘I didn’t hear the judge’s questioning of the accused, nor the testimony of Coméliau and the chief inspector from Auteuil, who were the first ones called to give evidence, because I was still in the witness room. Sitting there with me, among others, were the concierge from Rue Caulaincourt, wearing a red hat, looking very smug and sure of herself, and Monsieur Lalinde, the former colonial administrator, whose evidence was the most damning, and who seemed in a bad way. I thought he too had lost weight. He seemed to have something on his mind, and it made me wonder whether he was about to alter his earlier statement in court.

  ‘For better or worse, I added my brick to the edifice so carefully constructed by the prosecution.

  ‘I was just an instrument. I could only say what I had seen, what I had heard. No one asked for my opinion.

  ‘I spent the rest of those two days in the courtroom. Lalinde didn’t retract his statement, didn’t change a single word of what he had already said.

  ‘During the recesses, I heard members of the public talking in the corridors, and it was clear that no one was in any doubt about Josset’s guilt.

  ‘Annette appeared on the witness stand, which caused a commotion, as whole rows of people stood up to get a better look, and the judge threatened to clear the court.

  ‘She was asked detailed questions, rather leading in the way they were put, particularly about the abortion.

  ‘ “Was it Josset who took you to see Madame Malletier in Rue Lepic?”

  ‘ “Yes, Your Honour.”

  ‘ “Please turn and face the jury …”

  ‘She wanted to add something, but they had already moved on to the next question.’

  Several times, Maigret had the impression that she was trying to make a more subtle point, but no one was interested. Wasn’t it she, for example, who, when she told her lover that she was pregnant, asked him if he knew an abortionist?

  ‘And so it went on,’ Maigret told Pardon.

  Sitting on the public benches, he couldn’t keep still. He was constantly tempted to raise his hand and intervene.

  ‘In two days, barely a dozen hours in total, including the reading of the charge and the summing-up by both prosecutor and counsel, they claimed to be able to summarize, to a group of men who had previously known nothing, a whole life, describe not just one person’s character but several, as they also discussed Christine, Annette, her father and other secondary players.

  ‘It was hot in the courtroom, as we were having a superb Indian summer that year. Josset spotted me. On several occasions our eyes met, but it was only towards the end of the first day that he seemed to recognize me and gave me a slight smile.

  ‘Did he realize that I had doubts, that this case gave me an uneasy feeling, that I was dissatisfied with my own and others’ performance and that, because of him, I had begun to feel disgusted by my profession?

  ‘I don’t know. Most of the time he seemed immersed in an apathy that many court reporters interpreted as contempt. Since he had taken a certain care over his appearance, they spoke of his vanity, and cleverly highlighted other examples of it in his work life and even in his childhood and youth

  ‘The attorney general, who was conducting the prosecution himself, also emphasized his vanity:

  ‘ “A vain weakling …”

  ‘Maître Lenain’s rhetorical sallies did nothing to change the mood of the courtroom; quite the opposite, in fact!

  ‘When the jury retired to consider its verdict, I knew already the answer to the first question – did Josset kill his wife? – would be “yes”, and probably unanimous.

  ‘I had hoped the answer to the second one – concerning premeditation – would be negative by a narrow margin. And as for attenuating circumstances …

  ‘There were people eating sandwiches, women passing round sweets. The reporters reckoned they had just enough time to nip out for a drink in the bar.

  ‘It was quite late when the jury returned with their verdict. The president of the jury, an ironmonger from the sixth arrondissement, held a piece of paper i
n his trembling hand.

  ‘ “On the first question: yes.”

  ‘ “On the second question: yes.”

  ‘ “On the third question: no.”

  ‘Josset was found guilty of the premeditated murder of his wife and refused the benefit of any attenuating circumstances.

  ‘I saw him as the shock hit him. He turned pale, looked surprised; he couldn’t believe his ears at first. He waved his arms around, as if struggling, then he suddenly became calm and turned to the public and, with one of the most tragic expressions I have ever seen in my life, said in a firm voice:

  ‘ “I am innocent.”

  ‘There were a few boos. One woman fainted. The stewards rushed into the courtroom.

  ‘In the blink of an eye, Josset was whisked away. One month later the press announced that the President of the Republic had turned down his appeal for clemency.

  ‘No one bothered with him any more. Another case had captured the public’s imagination, a sex scandal in which each day brought some new salacious revelation, and Josset’s execution, when it came, was given no more than a few lines on page five of the newspapers.’

  There was a silence. Pardon stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray while Maigret filled a fresh pipe, and the women’s voices could be heard from the other room.

  ‘Do you believe he was innocent?’

  ‘Twenty years ago, when I was still new to the force, I might have said “yes” without hesitation. Since then, I’ve learned that anything, no matter how unlikely, is possible.

  ‘Two years after the trial I had a lowlife in my office who was suspected of involvement in the white slave trade. It wasn’t the first time he’d had dealings with us. He was one of our regular customers.

  ‘His identity card said he was a navigator, and in fact he did make regular crossings to South and Central America on board cargo ships, though he spent most of his time in Paris.

  ‘With people like him it’s different. You’re on familiar territory.

  ‘Sometimes we do deals.

  ‘At one point, he squinted at me out of the corner of his eye and murmured:

  ‘ “What if I have something valuable to sell?”