My Friend Maigret Page 2

  “Precisely. I wrote to him, I recall. I don’t know how you deal with them in your country.”

  “Very correctly.”

  “I don’t doubt it. Here we sometimes knock them around. We’re not always gentle with them. But the odd thing is that they seldom hold it against us. They know we’re only doing our job. From one interrogation to the next, we get to know each other.”

  “This is the one who called himself a friend of yours?”

  “I’m convinced he was sincere. I particularly remember the girl and what I remember still better is the headed paper. If we have the chance I’ll show you the Brasserie des Ternes. It’s very comfortable and the sauerkraut is excellent. Do you like sauerkraut?”

  “On occasion,” replied the Englishman, without enthusiasm.

  “Every afternoon and evening there are a few women sitting round a table. It’s there that Ginette used to work. A Breton girl, who came from a village in the St. Malo area. She started off as a maid of all work with a local butcher. She adored Pacaud, and when he talked of her, tears would come into his eyes. Does that surprise you?”

  Nothing surprised Mr. Pyke, whose expression betrayed no emotion whatsoever.

  “I became rather interested in them, at one time. She was riddled with TB. She hadn’t wanted to have herself cured because that would have taken her away from her Marcel. When he was in prison, I persuaded her to go to see one of my friends, a specialist on consumption, and he got her into a sanatorium in Savoie. That’s all.”

  “That’s what you wrote to Pacaud?”

  “That’s right. Pacaud was at Fresnes and I hadn’t time to go there myself.”

  Maigret gave the file back to Langlois and started down the stairs.

  “How about going to eat?”

  This was another problem, almost a case for his conscience. If he took Mr. Pyke for his meals into too luxurious restaurants he risked giving his colleagues from across the channel the impression that the French police spend most of their time junketing. If, on the other hand, he took him to places where only set meals are served, perhaps they would accuse him of stinginess.

  Same with apéritifs. To drink them or not to drink them?

  “Are you expecting to go to Porquerolles?”

  Did Mr. Pyke want to make a trip to the Midi?

  “It’s not up to me to decide. In theory I don’t operate outside Paris and the department of the Seine.”

  The sky was gray, a lowering, hopeless gray, and even the word “mistral” took on a tempting allure.

  “Do you like tripe?”

  He took him to the Market, and made him eat tripes à la mode de Caen and crêpes Suzette, which were brought to them on attractive copper chafing dishes.

  “This is what we call an empty sort of day.”

  “So do we.”

  What could the Scotland Yard man be thinking of him? He had come to study “Maigret’s methods” and Maigret had no method. He found only a large, rather clumsy man who must appear to him to be the prototype of the French public servant. How long would he go on following him about like that?

  At two o’clock they were back at the Quai des Orfèvres, and Caracci was still there, in the kind of glass cage that served as a waiting room. That meant they had got nothing out of him and they were going to question him again.

  “Has he eaten?” Mr. Pyke asked.

  “I don’t know. Possibly. Sometimes they have a sandwich brought up for them.”

  “And otherwise?”

  “They let them fast a little to prompt the memory.”

  “The chief is asking for you, inspector.”

  “Will you excuse me, Mr. Pyke?”

  That was something to the good. The other wouldn’t follow him into the chief’s office.

  “Come in, Maigret. I’ve just had a call from Draguignan.”

  “I know what that’s about.”

  “Lechat has of course been in touch with you. Have you much work at the moment?”

  “Not too much. Apart from my guest…”

  “Does he get in your way?”

  “He’s the soul of discretion.”

  “Do you remember the man called Pacaud?”

  “I remembered him when I looked up his file.”

  “Don’t you find the story rather odd?”

  “I only know what Lechat told me on the telephone and he was so eager to explain that I didn’t understand very much.”

  “The commissioner talked to me at great length. He insists on your going for a trip down there. According to him it’s because of you that Pacaud was killed.”

  “Because of me?”

  “He can’t see any other explanation for the murder. For several years Pacaud, better known under the name of Marcellin, had lived at Porquerolles in his boat. He had become a popular figure. As far as I could gather he was more like a tramp than a fisherman. In the winter he lived without doing anything. In the summer he took tourists out fishing round the islands. No one had anything to gain by his death. He wasn’t known to have had enemies. Nothing was stolen from him, for the very good reason that there was nothing to steal.”

  “How was he killed?”

  “That’s just what intrigues the commissioner.”

  The chief consulted several notes which he had made during his telephone conversation.

  “As I don’t know the place, it’s difficult for me to get an accurate picture. The evening before last…”

  “I thought I was told it was yesterday…”

  “No, the day before. A number of people were gathered at the Arche de Noé. That must be an inn or a café. At this time of year, it seems, only the habitués are to be seen there. Everyone knows everyone else. Marcellin was there. In the course of an almost general conversation he mentioned you.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve no idea. People talk freely about celebrities. Marcellin claimed you were a friend of his. Perhaps some people had cast doubts on your professional abilities. The fact remains that he defended you with uncommon vigor.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “He was always more or less drunk. There was a strong mistral blowing. I don’t know what effect the mistral has down there, but as far as I can gather, it is of some importance. It was chiefly on account of this mistral that Marcellin, instead of sleeping in his boat, as he normally did, went off in the direction of a hut which stands near the harbor, where the fishermen spread out their nets. When he was found, the next morning, he had received several shots in the head, fired at point-blank range, and one in the shoulder. The murderer emptied his gun on him. Not content with that he hit him in the face with a heavy instrument. It seems he put an extraordinary ferocity into it.”

  Maigret looked at the Seine, outside, through the curtain of rain, and thought of the Mediterranean sun.

  “Boisvert, the commissioner, is a pleasant fellow, whom I’ve known for ages. He doesn’t usually get carried away. He’s just arrived on the scene, but he has to leave again this evening. He agrees with Lechat in thinking it was the conversation about you which started the thing off. He’s not far from saying that it was you, in a sort of way, that was being aimed at through Marcellin. See what I mean? A man who has a big enough grudge against you to go for anyone who claims to be a friend of yours and sticks up for you.”

  “Are there people like that at Porquerolles?”

  “That’s what’s puzzling Boisvert. On an island everyone is known. No one can land and go off again without it being known. So far there isn’t the remotest suspect. Or else they’ll have to suspect people without any grounds. What do you think?”

  “I think Mr. Pyke would like a trip to the Midi.”

  “And you?”

  “I think I’d like it too if it was a question of going by myself.”

  “When will you be leaving?”

  “I’ll take the night train.”

  “With Mr. Pyke?”

  “With Mr. Pyke!”

  Did the Englishman
imagine the French police had powerful motorcars at their disposal to take them to the scenes of crimes?

  He must think, at any rate, that Police Headquarters detectives have unlimited expenses for their movements. Had Maigret done right? Alone, he would have been content with a couchette. At the Gare de Lyon he hesitated. Then at the last moment he took two wagon-lit places.

  It was sumptuous. In the corridor they found de luxe travelers, with impressive-looking luggage. An elegant crowd, laden with flowers, was seeing a film star on to the train.

  “It’s the Blue Train,” Maigret mumbled, as if to excuse himself.

  If only he had been able to know what his fellow policeman was thinking! Into the bargain they were obliged to undress in front of one another and, the next morning, they would have to share the minute washing compartment.

  “Well,” said Mr. Pyke, in dressing gown and pajamas, “so a case is under way.”

  Just what did he mean by that? His French had something so precise about it that he always looked for a hidden meaning.

  “It’s a case, yes.”

  “Did you take a copy of Marcellin’s file?”

  “No. I confess I never thought of it.”

  “Have you concerned yourself at all about what has become of the woman: Ginette, I believe?”

  “No.”

  Was there a reproach in the look Mr. Pyke shot at him?

  “Have you brought an open arrest warrant with you?”

  “Not that either. Only an interrogation permit, which entitles me to summon people and question them.”

  “Do you know Porquerolles?”

  “I’ve never set foot there. I hardly know the Midi. I was on a case there, once, at Antibes and Cannes, and I remember particularly it was overpoweringly hot and I felt permanently sleepy.”

  “Don’t you like the Mediterranean?”

  “In general, I dislike places where I lose the desire to work.”

  “That’s because you like working, is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was true. On the one hand he railed every time a case came along to interrupt his daily routine. On the other hand as soon as he was left in peace for several days he would become restless, as though anxious.

  “Do you sleep well on trains?”

  “I sleep well anywhere.”

  “The train doesn’t help you think?”

  “I think so little, you know!”

  It embarrassed him to see the compartment filled with smoke from his pipe, the more so as the Englishman didn’t smoke.

  “So you don’t know what line you are going to start on?”

  “Quite right. I don’t even know if there is a line.”

  “Thank you.”

  One could feel that Mr. Pyke had registered Maigret’s every word, had carefully arranged them in order in his brain, for use later on. It could not have been more off-putting. One could imagine him, on his return to Scotland Yard, gathering his colleagues round him (why not in front of a blackboard?) and announcing in his precise voice:

  “A case conducted by Chief Inspector Maigret…”

  And what if it was a flop? If it was one of those stories where one flounders about and only finds out the solution ten years later, by the merest fluke? If it was a humdrum affair, if tomorrow Lechat rushed up to the carriage door, announcing:

  “All over! We’ve arrested the drunkard who did it. He’s confessed.”

  What if…Madame Maigret hadn’t put a dressing gown in his suitcase. She hadn’t wanted him to take the old one, which looked like a monk’s habit, and he had been meaning to buy a new one for the last two months. He felt indecent in his nightshirt.

  “How about a nightcap?” suggested Mr. Pyke, offering him a silver whisky flask and cup. “That’s what we call the last whisky before going to bed.”

  He drank a cupful of whisky. He didn’t like it. Perhaps, equally, Mr. Pyke didn’t like the calvados that Maigret had been making him take for the last three days.

  He slept and was conscious of snoring. When he woke, he saw olive trees on the edge of the Rhône and knew they had passed Avignon.

  The sun was shining, a light golden mist above the river. The Englishman, freshly shaved, immaculate from head to foot, was standing in the corridor, his face pressed to the window. The washing compartment was as clean as if he had never used it and there lurked a discreet smell of lavender.

  Not yet sure if he was in a good temper or a bad one Maigret grumbled as he fumbled in his suitcase for his razor:

  “Now we must be careful not to make a balls of this.”

  Perhaps it was the impeccable correctness of Mr. Pyke that made him coarse…

  2

  And so the first round had been fairly successfully concluded. Which does not mean that there had been any competition between the two men, at least not on professional grounds. If Mr. Pyke was more or less participating in Maigret’s activities as a policeman, it was purely in the role of spectator.

  Yet Maigret was thinking in terms of “first round,” aware that it was not quite accurate. Hasn’t one the right to use one’s own private language, in one’s own mind?

  When he had joined the English detective in the Pullman corridor, for example, there was no doubt that the latter, taken by surprise, had not had time to efface the expression of wonder which quite transfigured him. Was it simply shame, because a Scotland Yard official is not supposed to give his attention to the sunrise on one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world? Or was the Englishman reluctant to show outward signs of admiration, considering it indecent in the presence of an alien witness?

  Maigret had inwardly chalked up a point to himself, without a moment’s hesitation.

  In the restaurant car, he had to admit, Mr. Pyke had scored one in his turn. A mere nothing. A slight contraction of the nostrils on the arrival of the bacon and eggs, which were indisputably not so good as in his country.

  “You don’t know the Mediterranean, Mr. Pyke?”

  “I usually spend my holidays in Sussex. I once went to Egypt though. The sea was gray and choppy, and it rained all the way.”

  And Maigret, who in his heart of hearts didn’t like the Midi very much, felt himself spurred by the desire to defend it.

  A questionable point: the headwaiter, who had recognized the chief inspector, whom he must have served elsewhere, came up and asked, in an insinuating voice, immediately after his breakfast:

  “Something to drink, as usual?”

  Now the day before, or the day before that, the Yard inspector had commented, with the air of one who never touches it, that an English gentleman never had strong drinks before the end of the afternoon.

  The arrival at Hyères was without question a round in Maigret’s favor. The palm trees, round the station, were motionless, transfixed in a Sahara sun. It was very likely that there had been an important market that morning, a fair or a fête, for the carts, vans, and heavy trucks were mobile pyramids of early vegetables, fruits, and flowers.

  Mr. Pyke, just like Maigret, found his breath coming a little more quickly. There was a real sense of entering another world, and it was uncomfortable to do so in the dark clothes which had suited the previous day in the rainy streets of Paris.

  He ought, like Inspector Lechat, to have worn a light suit and a shirt with an open collar, and shown a red patch of sunburn on his forehead. Maigret had not immediately recognized him, for he remembered his name rather than his face. Lechat, who was threading his way through the porters, looked almost like a boy from the district, small and thin, hatless, with espadrilles on his feet.

  “This way, chief!”

  Was this a good mark? For though this devil Mr. Pyke noted everything down, it was impossible to tell what he classified in the good column and what he put into the bad one. Officially Lechat ought to have called Maigret “chief inspector,” for he was not in his department. But there were few detectives in France who could deny themselves the pleasure of calling him “c
hief” with affectionate familiarity.

  “Mr. Pyke, you already know about Inspector Lechat. Lechat, let me introduce Mr. Pyke, from Scotland Yard.”

  “Are they in on it too?”

  Lechat was so taken up with his Marcellin case that it didn’t surprise him at all that it should have become an international affair.

  “Mr. Pyke is in France on a study tour.”

  While they walked through the crowd Maigret wondered at the curious way Lechat was walking sideways, twisting his neck around.

  “Let’s hurry through,” he was saying. “I’ve got a car at the entrance.”

  It was the small official car. Once inside the inspector heaved a sigh:

  “I thought you’d better be careful. Everyone knows it’s you they’ve got it in for.”

  So just now, in the crowd, it was Maigret the tiny Lechat was trying to protect!

  “Shall I take you straight to the island? You haven’t anything to do in Hyères, have you?”

  And off they went. The land was flat, deserted, the road lined with tamarisks, with a palm tree here and there, then white salt marshes on the right. The change of scene was as absolute as if they had been transported to Africa—with a blue porcelain sky, and the air perfectly still.

  “And the mistral?” Maigret asked, with a touch of irony.

  “It stopped quite suddenly yesterday evening. It was high time. It’s blown for nine days and that’s enough to drive everyone mad.”

  Maigret was skeptical. The people from the north—and the north begins around Lyon—have never taken the mistral seriously. So Mr. Pyke was excused for displaying indifference as well.

  “No one has left the island. You can question everyone who was there when Marcellin was murdered. The fishermen were not at sea that night because of the storm. But a torpedo boat from Toulon and several submarines were doing exercises in the lee of the island. I rang up the Admiralty. They are positive. No boat made the crossing.”

  “Which means the murderer is still on the island?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Lechat was playing the old boy, who knows his way around and the people. Maigret was the new boy, which is always rather a distasteful role. The car, after half an hour, was slowing to a halt at a rocky promontory on which there was nothing to be seen except a typical Provençal inn and several fishermen’s cottages painted pink and pale blue.