Signed, Picpus Read online

  ‘Well?’

  He does not answer. He wipes his eyes. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s crying, for Maigret has already observed that his eyes were watery to start with.

  ‘What were you doing in the kitchen?’

  He stares at them again. It’s as if words have no meaning for him.

  ‘How is it that you were locked inside the kitchen?’ he is asked again. ‘The key wasn’t on the inside. It isn’t outside either …’

  ‘I don’t know …’ he whispers quietly, like a child who’s afraid of getting the stick.

  ‘What don’t you know?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Have you got any papers?’

  He searches through his pockets, awkwardly, wipes his eyes again, sniffles, and finally hands over a wallet with initials on it picked out in silver. The police chief and Maigret exchange looks.

  Is this old man really senile or is he acting a role and doing it to perfection? From the wallet, Maigret takes out an identity card and reads it aloud.

  ‘Octave Le Cloaguen, retired ship’s doctor, age: sixty-eight, 13, Boulevard des Batignolles, Paris.’

  ‘Clear the room!’ Maigret barks suddenly.

  Joseph Mascouvin gets meekly to his feet.

  ‘Not you … Stay here, dammit! … And sit down!’

  It is literally stifling for the ten or fifteen people in this doll-sized flat.

  ‘You sit down too, Monsieur Le Cloaguen! … And you can begin by telling me what you were doing in this house.’

  Le Cloaguen gives a start. He has heard the sound of the words but has not understood their meaning. Maigret repeats his question and is obliged to shout.

  ‘Oh, yes! … Sorry … I’d come …’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To see her …’ he stammered, motioning to the body under the sheet.

  ‘You wanted to know what the future has in store for you?’

  No reply.

  ‘Tell me, were you, yes or no, one of her clients? …’

  ‘Yes … I’d come …’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘I was sitting here … Yes, on this gilt chair … Someone knocked on the door … Like this …’

  He goes to the door. It seems possible that he intends to run off. But no, it’s only to knock in a particular, jerky way.

  ‘Then, she said …’

  ‘All right, tell us … What did she say?’

  ‘She said: “Quick, in here!” … and she pushed me into the kitchen …’

  ‘Was she the one who locked you in?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Nothing … I sat on the table … The window was open … I looked out into the street …’

  ‘After that?’

  ‘After that, nothing … A lot of people came … I didn’t think I should show my face …’

  He speaks quietly, slowly, almost ruefully and then suddenly asks a very unexpected question:

  ‘You wouldn’t have any tobacco on you?’

  ‘Cigarette?’

  ‘Tobacco.’

  ‘You smoke a pipe?’

  Maigret holds out his pouch. Le Cloaguen takes a twist of tobacco and puts it in his mouth with visible satisfaction.

  ‘There’s no point telling my wife …’

  Meanwhile, Lucas has been searching the flat. Maigret knows exactly what he is looking for.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothing, sir … The key to the kitchen isn’t anywhere here … I also asked an officer to go down and take a look around in the street, in case it was thrown out of the window …’

  Maigret sums up, for the benefit of Le Cloaguen:

  ‘So in short, you say you got here just before five to consult the clairvoyant. At two or three minutes to five, someone knocked on the door in a distinctive way, and Mademoiselle Jeanne pushed you into the kitchen … Have I got that right? … You looked out at the street, then you heard voices and you didn’t move a muscle … You didn’t even look through the keyhole.’

  ‘No … I thought she was entertaining visitors …’

  ‘You’ve been before?’

  ‘Every week.’

  ‘Over a long period?’

  ‘Very long.’

  Gaga or not gaga?

  There is great excitement in the neighbourhood. More than 200 people have collected in the street below by the time the vehicles bringing the prosecutor’s people arrive. Outside are sunshine, bright colours, café terraces where it is very pleasant to sit in front of a cold beer. Maigret puts his jacket back on because the important gentlemen are coming up the stairs.

  ‘Ah! It’s you, detective chief inspector,’ says the deputy public prosecutor. ‘Am I to understand that we have an interesting case here?’

  ‘Yes, apart from the fact that so far I’m having to deal with two lunatics!’ Maigret mutters to himself.

  First the moron Mascouvin, who never takes his eyes off Maigret’s bulky figure! And then there’s this old man who chews tobacco and sniffles!

  More cars arrive. This time, it’s the journalists.

  ‘Listen, Lucas … Get these two characters out of here … I’ll be back at headquarters in half an hour.’

  It is then that Mascouvin comes out with a priceless remark.

  After shaking his head and looking for his hat all round the living room, which is now a mess, he murmurs with the seriousness with which he does everything:

  ‘You do realize, inspector,’ he observes, ‘that it was Picpus who killed the clairvoyant!’

  2. The Sweating Man

  Curiously enough, it was as he sat staring mechanically at a hand, a man’s hand on a knee covered by worn cloth, that Maigret all at once felt in some way involved in what had happened and stopped thinking of the man at his side as just another regular customer, though a somewhat colourful one.

  Back there in Rue Coulaincourt, it had been a circus, to use Maigret’s word for it. He hated being descended on by the public prosecutor’s officers. In the mêlée, the inspector had thought that Octave Le Cloaguen had looked like a cranky old man who seemed permanently bewildered. At the very most, Maigret had been intrigued by the vacant stare which suddenly came over his pale eyes, as if his soul had momentarily been transported elsewhere. A question would be put to him two, three times, eventually the words would finally sink in, and he would furrow his brow as he tried to understand.

  Later, at Quai des Orfèvres, in his office which the sun had turned into a Turkish bath, a perspiring Maigret, repeatedly mopping his face, had questioned him thoroughly, but the results were more or less unhelpful. Le Cloaguen never got flustered. He even gave the impression that he was trying his best to please the inspector. And whereas Maigret kept wiping his forehead and the back of his neck with his handkerchief, the old man’s skin stayed perfectly dry, despite the overcoat which he had not taken off. Maigret had taken note: it confirmed his suspicion.

  And now both men were being driven along in an open taxi. It was eight in the evening, and the streets of Paris were filled with a pleasant coolness. Le Cloaguen did not move, and Maigret, without thinking of anything in particular, was staring at the old man’s right hand, which was resting on his knee, a strangely long hand with gnarled joints and skin so parchment-like that in places it looked as if it might split, like dried-up bark. The top of the index finger was missing.

  Was it this hand …? Maigret’s mind was working … A hand could do so many things in the course of a lifetime, and what over a period of sixty-seven years had this hand …?

  Suddenly a drop of water landed on the taut skin and scattered. At that point, they were driving along Rue de Wagram, a street lined on both sides by cafés and cinemas, through the happy noise and bustle of the crowds. Maigret looked up. The man was looking straight ahead of him, his features as stiff as ever, but a fringe of sweat had spread across his forehead.

  It was so unexpected that the inspector was di
sconcerted. Why, when he had kept his almost exaggerated composure for so long, was Le Cloaguen now suddenly showing symptoms of panic? For there could be no mistaking the signs. The perspiration had not been brought on by the heat, but by fear, that ignoble inward disintegration which cannot be resisted.

  Had the old man seen something? Or someone? Unlikely. Was it having a policeman’s eyes staring at his hand that had unsettled him? Could the missing finger joint possibly be some sort of clue?

  They soon reached Boulevard de Courcelles and were travelling past the gilded gates and blue-black shadows of Parc Monceau when Maigret finally understood, for the sweat was pouring off the forehead of the man at his side, and his face had acquired a pasty look: what was causing his panic was the fact that he was getting nearer to his house.

  A few minutes more and they were on Boulevard des Batignolles. A house built of grey stone. An imposing entrance. A well-to-do, even affluent look about it. The concierge’s lodge was well kept, and its occupant was trimly dressed in black. The stairs were dark, varnished and covered with a scarlet runner held in place by brass rods.

  Le Cloaguen climbed up them slowly, gasping for breath and, though he did not speak, his forehead still streamed with sweat. What was he afraid of?

  A single door on each floor, large doors made of dark oak with highly polished brass fittings. When they reached the third floor, Maigret rang the bell. For a whole minute, which seemed very long, a sound of furtive steps came from inside the apartment, until finally the door half opened and remained only half-open, and a woman’s face appeared. It wore a curious, suspicious expression.

  ‘Madame Le Cloaguen, I presume?’

  To which she replied very quickly:

  ‘The maid’s gone out … I myself had to …’

  Maigret sensed that she was lying. At that moment, he would have sworn she did not have a maid.

  ‘I would like very much, if it’s not too much trouble, to talk to you for a few moments … Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, Police Judiciaire …’

  The woman, who was probably about fifty years of age, short, apprehensive, with a face that was too mobile and remarkably vivacious eyes, looked at her husband. This lasted just a few seconds. Once again, Maigret had the impression of being able to detect the smell of fear in the air.

  Le Cloaguen’s face was expressionless. He did not say anything and explained nothing. He just stood there, his inner being again transported to some other place, waiting on the doormat to go into his apartment.

  The woman, who had regained her composure, stepped to one side then took a few steps back and opened the door of an immense drawing room into which thick curtains allowed only a dim grey light to pass.

  ‘Please be seated … What is it …? … What has he …?’

  Another brief look at her husband, to whom it had not occurred to remove his overcoat or take off his hat.

  Ten years hence, Maigret would still be able to reconstitute this drawing room down to the smallest details and picture the three tall windows hung with green velvet curtains with yellow tassels, antique chairs covered with dust-sheets, the small gilt table, the large mirror with dulled silvering above the black marble fireplace, the brass fire dogs …

  A faint rustling from behind a door. Someone was there, listening, a presence which Maigret had the impression was female; and he was not wrong: very soon he would learn that it was Gisèle Le Cloaguen, unmarried, aged twenty-eight.

  The apartment seemed to be very big, for it occupied the whole of one floor. Certain things suggested money but others had an odour of poverty. Madame Le Cloaguen was dressed in black silk and had fine rings on her fingers and a gold-mounted cameo brooch on her breast.

  ‘Could I start, madame, by asking if you are acquainted with someone called Mademoiselle Jeanne?’

  He was sure she wasn’t. But she ransacked her memory, obviously having expected an entirely different question.

  ‘What does this person do?’

  ‘She lives in Rue Coulaincourt …’

  ‘I don’t see …’

  ‘She earned her living by predicting the future … I can tell you what this is all about in a few words … Briefly then, this person was murdered at home today, at five o’clock … Now it so happens that at that time your husband was present in the apartment, where he was found locked inside the kitchen …’

  ‘Octave, tell me what …’

  She had turned to face him and spoke calmly and with dignity and yet she gave the impression that the calmness and dignity were no more genuine that the bronze andirons in the fireplace. Maigret was convinced that, if he got up and left, the door would scarcely have closed behind him before a sordid scene would erupt between the pair of them.

  Before replying, Le Cloaguen had to swallow his saliva.

  ‘I was there,’ he said, looking humble and defeated.

  She replied with haughty disdain:

  ‘I had no idea you were in the habit of having your fortune told!’

  Then she suddenly lost interest in him, sat down opposite Maigret and, in her best society manner, played absently with her cameo and began speaking with increasing volubility.

  ‘I must tell you now, inspector. I know nothing about this business. But I do know my husband. As he may have told you, he spent a long time working as a doctor on board liners sailing on South American routes. For several years he also sailed the China seas. Since then, alas, he has not been a man like other men …’

  She was not in the least inhibited by the presence of Le Cloaguen.

  ‘You must surely have noticed that he has become like a child again … It’s most unfortunate for my daughter and myself for it has caused serious harm to our social life.’

  Maigret looked around at the sitting room and in his mind’s eye imagined the receptions given here on Boulevard des Batignolles, the armchairs with their dust-sheets removed, the chandelier lit up, petits fours on the round gilt table, very stiff-backed ladies simpering over the tea cups.

  Later, the concierge would confirm what he was thinking. She would tell him about the weekly receptions, the ‘Mondays’, as everyone in the house sarcastically called them.

  It was also true that the Le Cloaguens had no maid, that a charwoman came every morning but on Mondays a head waiter was hired from Potel and Chabot.

  ‘And them being so well off!’ would add the concierge, who was far more forthcoming than the one in Rue Coulaincourt. ‘People reckon they’ve got more than 200,000 francs a year coming in. A notary from Saint-Raphaël travels up special once a year, in December, to bring them the money. Makes you wonder what they do with it. The shopkeepers hereabouts will tell you. In the butcher’s they only ask for the cheapest cuts, and you wouldn’t call the amounts they buy large. You’ve seen for yourself how the poor husband is dressed, winter and summer …’

  But what connection was there between this apartment and the light, airy flat in Rue Coulaincourt? Between this thin, tautly strung, so frighteningly self-controlled woman, and the pampered and cosseted Mademoiselle Jeanne, who had died in her living room full of sunshine?

  The investigation had only just begun. Maigret was trying not to draw conclusions from what he was seeing and hearing. He preferred to imagine people in their contexts: like the strange Mascouvin, at his desk at Proud and Drouin’s, then at home on Place des Vosges, or even in the countess’s bridge club in Rue des Pyramides.

  ‘Just like a big, overgrown child, inspector, I can’t find any other word for him … He spends every day wandering around the streets and only comes home for his meals … But I can assure you that he is perfectly harmless …’

  Harmless! … The word struck Maigret. He looked up at the old man. The sweat had vanished from his forehead, and he just sat where he was, quite unconcerned by what was going on around him.

  What had he been afraid of? Why had he got his self-assurance back? Or rather his indifference?

  There was another scuffle at the door, and Madame L
e Cloaguen said in a clear voice:

  ‘You can come in, Gisèle … May I introduce my daughter? She’s the one really who’s been hit hardest by her father’s condition … You must understand … When she invites friends here …’

  Why did Gisèle dress so badly and why did she choose to look so sour-faced when otherwise she could have been pretty? She shook hands like a man. Not a smile, nothing warm in her greeting. Such pitiless severity in the look she turned on the old man.

  It was she who told him, as if she were speaking to a servant:

  ‘Go and take your coat and hat off.’

  ‘Would you believe, Gisèle,’ explained her mother, ‘that this afternoon your father went to see a fortune-teller and as it happens there’s been a scandal …’

  Curious to hear the word ‘scandal’ being applied to a crime! It was patently obvious that the life or death of Mademoiselle Jeanne meant little to these women. What mattered was that Le Cloaguen had been there, that he’d been marched off to Quai des Orfèvres and that now, a detective chief inspector …

  ‘I’m very sorry, ladies, to bother you like this but, given the circumstances, I’d be glad if I could have a look round Monsieur Le Cloaguen’s room …’

  ‘Gisèle?’ murmured Madame Le Cloaguen, as though it were a question.

  The young woman blinked, which doubtless meant that the room had been tidied.

  To reach it, they had first to walk through a comfortable dining room, then a bedroom, which belonged to the mistress of the household and contained antique furniture, among which were some rather fine pieces. Maigret noted the fact that there was no bathroom in the apartment, only small rooms with wash-basins in which the wallpaper had not been changed for some considerable time and the floor was covered by odd pieces of linoleum.

  ‘His room doubles as an office,’ said the wife. ‘He has clung to the habit of simplicity, great simplicity, which he acquired during his travels …’

  Well! Why was the bolt on the outside of the door not on the inside, which would have been more logical? Did the old man get shut up in his room?

  On this point too Maigret’s intuition would be confirmed by the concierge.