Maigret and the Ghost Read online

  He added in a low voice:

  ‘Outside, I confess I …’

  He cheated. At home, he forced himself to smoke cigars, which didn’t suit him, but elsewhere he smoked cigarettes, secretly, on the sly, like a schoolboy.

  He was neither tall nor fat. His brown hair was starting to turn silver and his face bore the marks of a tiring life. The evening seldom finished without an anxious phone call from a patient and Pardon apologizing for having to leave his guests.

  ‘Tell me something, Maigret …’

  He had said this hesitantly, with a touch of shyness.

  ‘We must be about the same age …’

  ‘I’m fifty-two.’

  Pardon knew that: he was Maigret’s doctor and must have his records.

  ‘Three years away from retirement. In the police, when you reach fifty-five, they expect you to go fishing …’

  A tinge of sadness. Sitting by the window, the two men occasionally received a breath of cool air and glimpsed a flash of lightning in the sky, unaccompanied by the noise of thunder. There were a few lighted windows in the buildings opposite, figures passing behind those windows, and an elderly man leaning on his elbows at the window of a dark room who seemed to be staring at them.

  ‘I’m forty-nine. At school, three years’ difference matters. Not at our age …’

  Maigret could not have foreseen that the details of this idle conversation would one day come back to haunt him. He liked Pardon. He was one of the few men he enjoyed spending an evening with.

  Pardon continued, still searching for words:

  ‘You and I have pretty much the same experience of people. Many of my patients could become clients of yours.’

  It was true: in this overpopulated neighbourhood, you met all sorts, the best and the worst.

  ‘I’d like to ask you a question.’

  His embarrassment was plain to see. They were friends, of course, just as their wives were friends, and yet they were reluctant to tackle certain subjects. They had never, for instance, discussed politics or religion.

  ‘In the whole of your career,’ Pardon continued, ‘have you ever encountered a truly wicked criminal … I mean …’

  He was once again searching for words, making an effort to clarify his thoughts.

  ‘A conscious criminal, one who’s responsible for his own actions, and acts out of pure spite, because that’s his vice, as some might put it … I’m not talking about those who mistreat children, for example. They’re almost all coarse creatures whose mental age is barely above ten, people who feel uncomfortable in an adult world and become heavy drinkers …’

  ‘So basically you’re talking about a pure criminal?’

  ‘Pure or impure … Let’s say a total criminal.’

  ‘As defined by the penal code?’

  ‘No. As defined by you.’

  Screwing up his eyes, Maigret looked at his friend through the smoke from his pipe, concentrating above all on the cigar that Pardon held at an awkward angle, the ash from which, growing too long, was about to fall on the carpet. He finally smiled, and the doctor, embarrassed, now also looked at the cigar.

  They understood each other. It was this business of cigars and cigarettes that had been bothering Pardon, a doctor who mostly treated the working classes, and had led him, perhaps unconsciously, to ask his question.

  He was forty-nine, as he had just said. Every day for more than twenty years, he had treated dozens of patients who looked at him as if he were God and expected everything from him: health, life, advice, a solution to their problems.

  He had saved the lives of men, women and children. He had helped others to accept their fate. Every day, he was called on to make rapid decisions that were as irreversible as those of a trial judge.

  Because she had read some newspaper articles, his wife had asked him to give up cigarettes, and he hadn’t felt as if he could upset or worry her by refusing. So when he was at home, he forced himself to puff awkwardly at a cigar that probably tasted awful.

  But as soon as he was outside, at the wheel of his car on the way to see a patient in pain, he would light a cigarette, his hand shaking with guilt.

  Maigret did not immediately answer the question his friend had asked. He had almost replied:

  ‘What about you?’

  That would have been too easy.

  ‘If I’d had the misfortune to become a magistrate,’ he began in a hesitant voice, ‘or if I was called to be a juror in a criminal trial, I wonder … No! I’m certain I couldn’t bring myself to judge a man.’

  ‘Whatever the crime?’

  ‘It’s not the crime that matters. It’s what goes on, or what went on, inside the person who committed it …’

  ‘So you’ve never dealt with a case in which you would have condemned the person without hesitation?’

  ‘Because of what you call wickedness? At first sight, yes. I’ve had people in my office I couldn’t stop myself from slapping. Then, as I investigated further …’

  That was where the conversation had ended as far as that subject was concerned, because one of the wives had approached, Maigret couldn’t remember which.

  ‘A little armagnac?’

  It was Pardon’s turn to throw Maigret a brief glance.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘By the way, when was the last time I gave you a check-up?’

  ‘About a year ago.’

  There was a roll of thunder, which seemed to pass from rooftop to rooftop, but the rain they had been expecting for several days was still holding off.

  ‘Shall we go into my consulting room for a moment?’

  Pardon’s daughter’s first-born was sleeping there in a folding cradle.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s a deep sleeper. Although only until five in the morning, unfortunately! Now let’s check your blood pressure …’

  Maigret took off his jacket, then his shirt, leaving himself bare-chested. Pardon had naturally assumed the grave and somewhat distant manner of the medical practitioner.

  ‘Breathe in … Deeper … Breathe through your mouth … Good … Lie down here and loosen your belt … I don’t suppose you’ve made up your mind to work less, at a slower pace, as I advised you?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I know, I know … Are you on a diet?’

  Maigret shook his head.

  ‘What about wine, beer, spirits? Have you reduced your intake?’

  ‘The only result of that is that I feel ashamed when I have a glass of beer or calvados. Between cases, I can go for days on end having just a little wine with my meals. But then I go into a bar to keep an eye on the house opposite, I breathe in the sharp smell typical of a Parisian bistro and …’

  Like Pardon with his cigarettes. Yet both of them were grown men!

  The Maigrets had walked home via Rue du Chemin-Vert, as was their habit.

  ‘What did he say about you?’

  ‘He says I’m fine.’

  This, of course, was the moment the sky chose to let loose on Paris all the water accumulated during weeks of heat.

  ‘Shall we take shelter in a doorway?’

  All this was ancient history. It was now ten days since the Maigrets had had dinner at the Pardons’. It was hot again. People were starting to leave for their holidays. In his office, Maigret was working without a jacket, with the window wide open, and the Seine glinted blue-green, like the sea on certain windless mornings.

  At 10.30, as he was going through his colleagues’ reports, Joseph, the elderly clerk, knocked at the door in a way that everyone in the house recognized. He came in without waiting for a reply and placed an envelope on Maigret’s desk.

  Maigret was surprised to see the engraved letterhead: Office of the Prefect of Police.

  Inside was a card.

  Detective Chief Inspector Maigret is requested to appear at the Office of the Prefect of Police at 11 a.m. on 28 June.

  Maigret’s cheeks turned red, as they had at school wheneve
r he was called to the headmaster’s office. 28 June … He looked mechanically at the calendar. It was indeed Tuesday 28 June. And it was 10.30. The summons hadn’t arrived in the mail but had been delivered by hand.

  He had been in the Police Judiciaire for more than thirty years, and the head of the Crime Squad for ten years, but this was the first time he had been summoned like this.

  He had seen about a dozen prefects come and go and had been on more or less good terms with them, although some had stayed in the post for so little time that he hadn’t even had the opportunity to speak to them.

  Others would call him on the telephone and ask him if he would be so good as to come to their office, and it was almost always to be given a delicate and usually not very pleasant assignment: to get the son or daughter of a highly placed figure – if not the highly placed figure himself – out of an embarrassing situation.

  His first reaction was to go straight to the commissioner, who must know what this was about. That morning, though, during the daily briefing, he hadn’t said anything to Maigret, had behaved as he normally did, seemingly distracted, asking the odd question as if he didn’t attach any importance to it.

  He had only been in his post for three years, and when he was appointed he had no experience of the police, except, perhaps, through novels. He was a high-ranking civil servant who had worked in a number of different ministries.

  Maigret remembered the days when the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire was chosen from among the detective chief inspectors. There had been a time when his colleagues had teased him, telling him he would end up as the big chief himself.

  Now, as he walked through the inspectors’ room with an anxious air, he told everybody:

  ‘If anyone asks for me, I’m seeing the prefect.’

  Two of his men at least looked up in surprise. Lucas and Janvier, who knew him better than the others, had sensed the anxiety and bad humour in Maigret’s voice.

  His pipe clenched between his teeth, he descended the big dusty staircase, went out the main entrance, waved at the officers on guard duty, walked along Quai des Orfèvres for a short distance and turned the corner of Boulevard du Palais.

  Before facing the boss, he very nearly went into the bar opposite to have a drink – anything: beer, white wine, an aperitif of some kind – and it was only now that for the first time he remembered the last dinner at the Pardons’, the business of the cigarettes, the consultation next to the folding cradle.

  The guards recognized him. He entered the lift.

  ‘The prefect’s office.’

  ‘Have you been summoned?’

  He showed the letter reluctantly. Not just anyone could enter. He was led to a waiting room he knew well.

  ‘Please wait.’

  As if he had a choice! The prefect was also a newcomer. Two years on the job. A young man. That was the fashion. He wasn’t yet forty but had been to the École Normale Supérieure and had then amassed enough diplomas to be put at the head of any department of the civil service.

  The new broom, as the newspapers had nicknamed him after his first press conference. Yes, just like film stars, prefects now gave press conferences, always making sure there were TV cameras present.

  ‘Gentlemen, Paris has to be a clean capital, and to achieve that, it’s essential to give it a clean sweep. Too many people in the last few years, too many private interests have interfered in …’

  11.05 … 11.10 … 11.15 … The clerk with his silver chain was dozing at his pedestal table, occasionally throwing Maigret an indifferent glance. He had been in service almost as long as Maigret himself.

  A bell rang shrilly. The clerk rose reluctantly, half opened the door, gave a hand signal, and Maigret at last entered the big, green-carpeted Empire-style office.

  ‘Please take a seat, detective chief inspector.’

  A soft, pleasant voice; a thin, very young face, framed by fair hair. Everyone knew from the newspapers that before starting work every morning the prefect spent time at the Roland Garros Stadium, keeping himself in shape with a few sets of tennis.

  He gave an impression of health and vigour – neatness, too, in his clothes, which he probably had made to measure in London. He was smiling. In all his photographs, he was smiling. His smile, admittedly, wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular. It was to himself that he smiled, with modest self-satisfaction.

  ‘Tell me something …’

  Like Pardon the other evening, except that instead of a cigar, the prefect was smoking a cigarette. Perhaps because his wife wasn’t around?

  Did he have the same self-satisfied smile in his wife’s presence?

  ‘You started in the police as a young man, I think?’

  ‘I started at the age of twenty-two.’

  ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Fifty-two.’

  Again just like Pardon, but presumably for other reasons.

  Maigret looked his grumpiest, fiddling with an empty pipe without daring to fill it. He added, rather as if to tempt fate:

  ‘Three years from retirement.’

  ‘Indeed. Don’t you think that’s rather a long time?’

  He felt himself turn red. In order not to lose his temper, he stared at the bronze adornments on the feet of the desk.

  ‘Did you go straight into the Police Judiciaire?’

  The voice still had the same softness, an impersonal softness, perhaps something he’d learned.

  ‘In my day, you didn’t start in the Police Judiciaire. Like all my colleagues at the time, I began in a local station, the one in the ninth arrondissement.’

  ‘In uniform?’

  ‘I was the chief inspector’s secretary. Later, I had a period on the beat.’

  The prefect was studying him with a curiosity that was neither benevolent nor aggressive.

  ‘And then you worked in several different squads?’

  ‘The Métro, the department stores, the railway stations, vice, gambling …’

  ‘It seems to have left you with pleasant memories.’

  ‘Just like my school years.’

  ‘I mention it because you talk about it at every opportunity.’

  This time, Maigret turned crimson.

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Unless other people talk about it on your behalf. You’re very well known, Monsieur Maigret, very popular …’

  So soft did the voice remain that it might have been thought the prefect had summoned him to offer his congratulations.

  ‘Your methods, according to the newspapers, are quite dramatic …’

  He stood up and walked over to the window, where for a moment he looked at the cars and buses passing the Palais de Justice. When he came back to the middle of the room, his smile – and hence his self-satisfaction – had become more pronounced.

  ‘You’re at the top of the ladder now, head of the Crime Squad, and yet you haven’t abandoned the habits you picked up early in your career. You don’t spend much time in your office, so I’ve heard.’

  ‘No, sir, not very much.’

  ‘You like to deal in person with tasks that would normally be handled by your inspectors.’

  Silence.

  ‘Including what you call stakeouts.’

  This time, Maigret made up his mind. He gritted his teeth and filled his pipe.

  ‘So, for example, you can be seen spending hours on end in little bars and cafés, in all sorts of places one wouldn’t expect to come across a public servant of your rank.’

  Was he going to light his pipe or not? He didn’t yet dare. He held back, still in his armchair, while the thin, elegant prefect came and went on the other side of the mahogany desk.

  ‘These are outdated methods, which may have had some merit in their time.’

  The striking of the match made the prefect jump, but he offered no comment. For a fraction of a second, his smile faded, then returned, just the same as before.

  ‘That old style of policing has its traditions. Informers
, for example. You maintain cordial relations with people who live on the fringes of the law; you turn a blind eye to their peccadilloes and in return they give you a helping hand … Do you still use informers, Monsieur Maigret?’

  ‘Like every police force in the world.’

  ‘Do you also turn a blind eye?’

  ‘When necessary.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever noticed that lots of things have changed since the days when you started?’

  ‘I’ve seen nine commissioners and eleven prefects come and go.’

  Too bad! It was a question of being true to himself, and to all his colleagues at police headquarters, the veterans anyway – the young inspectors tended to think the same way as this tennis player.

  If the prefect registered the blow, nothing appeared on the surface. He could have been a diplomat. It was quite possible he might end up as an ambassador.

  ‘Are you familiar with Mademoiselle Prieur?’

  The real attack was starting. On what grounds? Maigret wasn’t yet in a position to guess.

  ‘Should I be, sir?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Well, it’s the first time I’ve heard the name.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Nicole Prieur … Have you also never heard of Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Prieur, Master of Requests at the Council of State?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘He lives at 42 Boulevard de Courcelles.’

  ‘That may well be the case.’

  ‘He’s Nicole’s uncle. She lives with him.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘Let me ask you, detective chief inspector, where you were at one a.m. last night.’

  This time, the tone was more abrupt, and the smile had gone from his eyes.

  ‘I’m waiting for your reply.’

  ‘Is this an interrogation?’

  ‘How you take it is up to you. I asked you a specific question.’

  ‘May I ask in what capacity?’

  ‘As your superior in the chain of command.’

  ‘I see.’

  Maigret took his time. He had never felt so humiliated in his life, and his fingers had tightened so much on the bowl of his pipe that they had turned white.

  ‘I went to bed at ten thirty, after watching television with my wife.’

  ‘Did you have dinner at home?’