Maigret Takes a Room Page 12

  Was he mistaken? Wasn’t there the vague appearance of a smile on those tense lips?

  He remembered the words of the old drunk woman:

  ‘A pretty little thing, plump as a quail …’

  ‘Do you know, Françoise, what’s going to happen?’

  She had frowned at the sound of her first name.

  ‘He’s going to come to the street. Perhaps he’s already come and seen the copper vase warning him of danger.

  ‘He thinks that we’re going to arrest you.

  ‘Whatever happens, he wants to keep that from happening.’

  At last he had a reaction. The sick woman sat up and spat at him fiercely:

  ‘I don’t want to!’

  ‘So he exists, and I wasn’t mistaken.’

  ‘Do you have no pity?’

  ‘Did he have any pity for my inspector, who hadn’t done anything to him? He thought only of his own personal safety.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Let’s say that he thought only of you …’

  What she didn’t yet suspect was that in a few scraps of phrases she had told him more than he had expected to get out of her.

  ‘Yes! Let’s say that he fired the gun for you, to prevent your husband, when he came back from Bordeaux …’

  ‘Shut up, for the love of God! Don’t you understand how hateful this all is?’

  She had lost her self-control. Unable to contain herself any longer, incapable of staying motionless in her bed, she got up, in her nightdress, revealing her bare feet and thin legs. She stood on the rug with fury in her eyes.

  ‘Arrest me, since you’ve found out so much. I was the one who fired the gun. I was the one who injured your inspector. Put me in jail and let’s get it all over with …’

  She was about to walk towards a wardrobe, probably to take out some clothes and get dressed, but she had forgotten how ill she was. She fell absurdly at Maigret’s feet and found herself on all fours on the floor, vainly trying to stand up.

  He thought more than ever about the story with the chicken.

  He had to grab her around the waist, while she fought and, whether deliberately or not, struck out at him and clutched his tie.

  ‘Calm down, Françoise. You’re going to hurt yourself, you know very well that I’m not going to arrest you, that you didn’t fire the gun, that you’d have found it very difficult to do so.’

  ‘I tell you, it was me …’

  It took a good minute, and Maigret wondered whether Mademoiselle Isabelle or Monsieur Kridelka could see them from their windows. At last he managed to lift her up, and she wasn’t heavy. He set her down on the bed and held her by her wrists until at last he felt her muscles relaxing.

  ‘Are you going to be reasonable?’

  She shook her head but, when he let go, she didn’t move, and he wrapped the sheet around her body, which had been half-exposed during their struggle.

  He stood back up and was straightening his hair when he heard her yelling at him like a furious child:

  ‘I’m not going to tell you anything.’

  With her face in the pillow, she was speaking between her teeth, to herself, and he had a certain amount of trouble hearing her.

  ‘I won’t tell you anything, and you will never find him. You are a brute. I hate you. If anything else unpleasant happens, it will be your fault. Oh, how I hate you …’

  He couldn’t help smiling, standing there watching her, without rancour, with pity in his eyes.

  As he didn’t move, it was she who half-turned her head to look at him with one eye.

  ‘What are you waiting for? For me to talk? I won’t tell you anything. You can do what you like, I won’t say anything. And first of all, what gives you the right to be in my bedroom?’

  She changed her attitude once more. She was no longer a woman approaching her fifties. She was a kid who knew she was wrong, refused to admit it and was fiercely fighting back.

  ‘You might be a policeman but you can’t come inside people’s homes without a warrant. Have you got one? Show me! If you haven’t, then leave now. Do you hear me? I order you to leave …’

  He nearly burst out laughing, releasing tension himself. He was getting a reaction.

  ‘You’re talking nonsense, Françoise …’

  ‘I forbid you to call me that … If you don’t leave right now I’m going to scream, I’ll call the neighbours, I’ll tell them that you’re taking pleasure in torturing a sick woman …’

  ‘I’ll come back,’ he said compliantly, making for the door.

  ‘It’s not worth it. You won’t get anything out of me. Go! I hate … I …’

  He realized that she was going to get up again and preferred to go out on to the landing and close the door. He was smiling in spite of himself. He heard her through the wall, still talking to herself.

  When he reached the street, he looked up and observed that she had put the copper pot in the window, perhaps just to annoy him.

  He was drinking a glass of white wine, the first of the day, at the Auvergnat’s bistro, when the concierge came back from the market. He saw Lucas following her and called out to him:

  ‘Well?’

  Lucas noticed that the chief was in a different mood and was surprised at his cheerfulness.

  ‘Did she talk?’

  ‘No. What about you?’

  ‘I followed the concierge as you told me to. She went to Rue Mouffetard, and I didn’t take my eyes off her. She stopped at several little stalls. I got close enough to hear what she was saying. She just bought some vegetables and some fruit. Then she went into a butcher’s shop.’

  ‘No one approached her?’

  ‘I didn’t notice anything suspicious. She didn’t post a letter. Admittedly she knew I was on her heels.’

  ‘She didn’t make a phone call either?’

  ‘No. Several times she looked at me angrily, and her lips moved as if she was saying some unpleasant things to me under her breath.’

  ‘She’s not the only one!’ Maigret sighed.

  He went on studying the street.

  ‘Do you think the man is in the area?’

  ‘It’s very likely. He didn’t get his usual phone call last night. He’s worried. But I couldn’t stop Françoise putting her copper pot back in the window.’

  Luckily there were few passers-by. If one of them looked up towards Madame Boursicault’s window, the two men couldn’t fail to notice.

  When they went back to Mademoiselle Clément’s, she in turn had gone out shopping. They had seen her passing by, with a shopping bag in her hand. Lucas sat down by the sitting-room window. Maigret called Quai des Orfèvres.

  Vauquelin picked up the phone.

  ‘I questioned the old woman a good half-hour ago. I had to promise her money to go for a drink. She’s telling me lots of names, people who frequented the Ternes district twenty-five years ago, most of whom have disappeared from circulation. It’s confused. I’m taking notes. I’ll check.’

  ‘Did anyone go to Rue Monsieur-le Prince?’

  ‘Colin has just got back. The concierge is still the same. She remembers the girl. She was a quiet person who didn’t receive anyone and never went out in the evening. Then she met someone respectable, an older widower, and it was only when she got married that she left the house.’

  ‘She didn’t receive letters from abroad?’

  ‘She didn’t receive any mail at all.’

  Maigret put some money in the money-box and went to chat to Lucas; a few moments later the telephone rang. It was Nantes.

  ‘Is that you, chief? I’m just back from Dédé’s bar. He was in bed, as I expected, and at first he was on his guard. When I talked to him about Françoise Binet, it took him a moment to remember. He called her Lulu.’

  ‘Does he know what’s become of her?’

  ‘He lost sight of her. Then, two or three years later, he met her with a very dark-complexioned young man.’

  ‘Another guy from the
underworld?’

  ‘No. That’s just it. He had never seen him before. According to Dédé he looked like a clerk or a salesman for one of the big stores.’

  ‘In what part of town did this all happen?’

  ‘Near Place Clichy. He didn’t talk to them. Lulu pretended not to recognize him.’

  ‘What does he say about her?’

  ‘That she was a silly little goose who didn’t know what she wanted, and that she must have ended up getting married and having lots of children.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all. He gave the impression he’d told me the lot. He didn’t hide the fact that he’d tried to make her work, and you know what that means. She tried: it didn’t work. According to him, she’d happened on one customer who put her off the job for good.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The copper vase was still by the window. Maigret went up to his room and saw Françoise Boursicault, who was making a phone call from her bed. She didn’t look as if she was about to hang up.

  She was speaking calmly, she looked serious and thoughtful. Every now and again she nodded her head.

  When she set the receiver back down, it was to go to bed and close her eyes.

  Maigret knew that they were going to call him and he went downstairs and paced up and down the corridor as he waited for the call.

  ‘Hello! Is that you, inspector?’

  ‘Yes. Who was she speaking to?’

  ‘A lawyer. Maître Lechat, who lives on Boulevard des Batignolles.’

  ‘Did it sound as if she knew him?’

  ‘No. She told him she needed to consult him on a very important matter, but that she was in bed and couldn’t leave. She asked him to come to Rue Lhomond urgently. He made her repeat her name three or four times. The idea of crossing Paris without knowing why didn’t seem to delight him. He tried to draw it out of her, but she told him nothing more.’

  ‘Did they arrange to meet?’

  ‘In the end he promised to come and see her late this morning.’

  Mademoiselle Clément came back, clutching her shopping bag. As he was hanging up, Maigret heard her panting slightly, even before he saw her. It seemed to him that she was trying to avoid him; she was hurrying towards the kitchen with unfamiliar haste.

  ‘What’s up with her?’ he asked Lucas.

  ‘I don’t know. She seems to be in a complete state …’

  Maigret went into the kitchen, where she was arranging the vegetables in the larder.

  She turned her back on him, deliberately avoiding having to face him. Her ears were red, her breathing, harder than usual, lifted her large bosom.

  ‘So tell me, Mademoiselle Clément!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t you want to see me any more?’

  She turned around all at once, cheeks crimson, eyes burning.

  ‘What are you trying to hide from me?’

  ‘Me?’

  Maigret’s eyes laughed.

  ‘What did he ask you?’

  ‘Have you been following me?’

  ‘Tell me how he accosted you and repeat exactly what he told you.’

  ‘That he was a journalist …’

  ‘Did he look like a journalist?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t know many journalists, but …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘His hair was nearly white.’

  ‘Tall, short?’

  ‘Short. Much shorter than me.’

  ‘Well dressed?’

  ‘Correctly dressed, yes. I stopped by a market stall and I was buying some radishes. He took off his hat to greet me.’

  ‘What kind of hat?’

  ‘A grey felt hat. He was dressed all in grey.’

  ‘Did he ask you what I was doing?’

  ‘Not like that. He explained that he represented a newspaper, and that he wanted to know how the inquiry was going.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I looked around for you, you or your inspector.’

  ‘Were you frightened?’

  ‘I don’t know. He looked at me insistently. He’s very thin, with circles under his eyes, a yellowish complexion.

  ‘I said, “Why don’t you ask Inspector Maigret?”

  ‘“Because he wouldn’t answer me. Is he still at your place?”

  ‘“Yes.”

  ‘“Has he gone to the house opposite?”

  ‘Then I stammered that I didn’t know. I was starting to get frightened. I thought he wouldn’t dare do anything in the crowd, but I still hurried to a butcher’s shop. It seemed like he was going to follow me in. Then I realized that he was hesitating. He looked anxiously at both sides of the street, then disappeared towards Boulevard Saint-Germain.’

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t tell him I went to see Madame Boursicault twice?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘And that you didn’t talk to him about her?’

  ‘I didn’t even know her name until you told me.’

  ‘Whose name?’

  ‘The sick woman on the first floor. She’s the one you’re talking about, isn’t she? And him, was he the murderer?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  The fat woman looked at him for a moment, her eyes wide, and then, out of sheer tension, exploded into an endless peal of laughter.

  8.

  In which Inspector Lucas takes notes for a fine story

  Later on, it would become one of the inquiries that Lucas would most happily relate, so much so that the Police Judiciaire ended up knowing some of his phrases by heart.

  ‘I was still at the window of the little sitting room. Suddenly the sky turned as black as Good Friday, and hailstones like walnuts started falling and bouncing off the cobbles. I remember I had left my window open back at headquarters. I wanted to call Joseph, the office clerk, to ask him to close it.

  ‘Maigret was pacing back and forth in the corridor, with his pipe between his teeth and his hands behind his back, when I passed close by him, and I don’t think he saw me.

  ‘But when I answered the phone, under the stairs, he took the receiver from my hands, put it back in place, still absent-mindedly, and said:

  ‘“Not now, son.”’

  In Lucas’ stories, Maigret often called him ‘son’, even though there was only about ten years’ difference between them.

  ‘The hail fell for almost an hour. The papers said it was one of the most violent storms ever recorded; there was millions of francs’ worth of damage around Argenteuil. Maigret had left the door open. During all this time he walked between the front door to the end of the corridor.

  ‘Mademoiselle Clément, from the kitchen, watched him through the spyhole. She came to speak to me in a low voice and she was concerned.

  ‘“I don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s scaring me!”

  ‘And at last the phone rang.’

  At this point in his story, Lucas always left a silence, and then said in a neutral voice:

  ‘He looked up and took the receiver with a sigh of relief.’

  It is true that the hail fell that morning, that Maigret paced the corridor for a long time and that he hurried to the phone as soon as it rang. He said:

  ‘Hello! Maigret here.’

  And a voice at the other end, a voice that seemed far away, seemed to echo:

  ‘Hello!’

  After which there was a silence. Hailstones bounced off the doorway into the corridor. Mademoiselle Clément, in her kitchen, holding a saucepan, didn’t move, frozen mid-gesture as if in a photograph.

  ‘Do you know who’s calling you?’ a voice said at last.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The one who shot Inspector Janvier.’

  ‘But you don’t know my name?’

  ‘I’ll find out shortly.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’re already at Place Clichy.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘Wh
at has she said?’

  ‘Nothing. She put the green plant in the window.’

  Another silence. The man must have been calling from a bar with an open door, because the sound of the hail could be heard at the other end of the line.

  ‘I can get to the border before I’m identified.’

  ‘That’s possible. I don’t think you will.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know very well.’

  Maigret put down his now unlit pipe on the phone, and his eye rested on the coin box and the little note.

  ‘Are you going to arrest her?’

  ‘I may have to.’

  ‘Do the journalists know that you’ve been to see her?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘No one?’

  ‘Just the concierge.’

  Maigret heard a sigh. He did nothing to encourage the man to speak. Each of them took his time.

  ‘What do you know about me?’

  ‘That you’re short, middle-aged, grey-haired, and that you wear a suit, a raincoat and a grey hat.’

  ‘Did Mademoiselle Clément tell you that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have time to change my clothes and go to the airport to take a plane abroad.’

  ‘I’m not contradicting you.’

  ‘You admit that I can escape?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I gave myself up, would you agree to leave the person you know about out of the case?’

  ‘It’s an eventuality that I’ve already considered.’

  ‘But you aren’t promising anything?’

  ‘Not before I know the details.’

  ‘The details of what?’

  ‘What happened twenty years ago.’

  ‘Just those?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You won’t get involved in the inspector’s case?’

  Maigret fell silent in turn, and an eternity seemed to pass.

  ‘No,’ he said at last.

  ‘Would you let me go and see her before handing myself in?’

  Mademoiselle Clément was still motionless in her kitchen, saucepan in hand, and Lucas, in his armchair, seemed to be holding his breath.

  ‘On one condition.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That you won’t make an attempt on her life, or on yours. Even if she asks you to.’

  The silence switched sides. This one was the longest.