Maigret's Revolver Read online

  At half past seven that evening, Madame Maigret, who had changed into a flowered dress and a fetching straw hat, was putting on her white cotton gloves.

  ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘I’m right behind you.’

  ‘Are you still worrying about that young man?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  One of the agreeable things about these dinners was that the Pardons lived only five minutes’ walk away. The sun was reflecting off the upper windows. The streets smelled warm and dusty. Children were still playing out of doors and families had brought chairs on to the pavement to take the air.

  ‘Don’t walk so fast.’

  He always walked too quickly for her.

  ‘Are you sure that was him buying the cartridges?’

  Since that morning, and especially after he had told her about the visit to Gastinne-Renette, there had been a weight on her mind.

  ‘You don’t think he means to kill himself, do you?’

  ‘Let’s change the subject, shall we?’

  ‘It’s just that he was so nervous! His cigarette ends in the ashtray were in shreds.’

  The air felt mild and Maigret held his hat in his hand as he walked, as if out on a Sunday stroll. They reached Boulevard Voltaire and arrived at the building where the Pardons lived, near the square. They took the lift, which made its usual squeak on starting up, and Madame Maigret gave her usual little jump.

  ‘Come in. My husband will be back in a few minutes. He was called out urgently, but it’s just round the corner.’

  It was rare for one of their dinners to take place without the doctor being summoned. He would say:

  ‘Don’t wait for me.’

  And they would often indeed leave without seeing him again.

  Jussieu was already there, alone in the drawing room, where there was a grand piano and embroidered covers on all the furniture. Pardon came bustling in a few minutes later, and disappeared straight into the kitchen.

  ‘Hasn’t Lagrange arrived?’

  Pardon was a small man, quite portly, with a large head and prominent eyes.

  ‘Now, wait, I want to try something out on you, and I’d like your opinion on it.’

  There was invariably a surprise at Pardon’s dinners, perhaps a special wine or liqueur, or in this case a Pineau des Charentes which a vineyard owner in Jonzac had sent him.

  ‘None for me!’ protested Madame Maigret, who was usually tipsy after a single glass.

  They chatted over the wine. Here too, the windows were open; life was going on at a leisurely pace on the boulevard, the air was golden and the light gradually faded into a rosy glow.

  ‘Well, I wonder what’s become of Lagrange.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I know him from when we were both at the Lycée Henri-IV. If I remember rightly, he had to leave after the fourth year. He was living in Rue Cuvier then, just by the Jardin des Plantes, and I was impressed by his father because he was a baron, at least he claimed to be. I lost touch with Lagrange for a long time, more than twenty years, and it was just a few months ago that he showed up at my surgery, waiting for his turn to see me like everyone else. But I recognized him at once.’

  He looked at his watch, then at the clock.

  ‘What surprises me is that he was so insistent about coming and now he isn’t here. If he doesn’t come in the next five minutes, we’ll start eating.’

  He refilled the glasses. Madame Maigret and Madame Pardon said nothing. While Madame Pardon was slim and Maigret’s wife a little on the plump side, they both displayed the same self-effacing attitude vis-a-vis their husbands. It was unusual for either of them to speak up during dinner, and it was only afterwards that they went into a corner of the room to talk quietly. Madame Pardon had a very long nose, excessively long, indeed, and you had to get used to it. At first, it was actually embarrassing to look at her face. Was it because of this nose, which must have made her the target of much mockery from her classmates, that she was so modest and looked at her husband as if she was thanking him for having married her?

  ‘I’m prepared to bet,’ Pardon was saying, ‘that all of us here had a friend at school who was like Lagrange. Out of twenty or thirty boys, there’s always at least one who is already fat at thirteen, with a podgy face and big pink legs!’

  ‘Well, in my class, it was me!’ Madame Maigret ventured to say.

  And Pardon gallantly replied:

  ‘In the case of girls, it sorts itself out. And they are often the prettiest ones in the end. We used to call François Lagrange “Baby Cadum”, and there must have been thousands like him all over France nicknamed that at the time, because of the advertisements for Cadum Baby Soap, with that huge pink baby on them!’

  ‘And he hasn’t changed?’

  ‘The proportions have changed, of course. But he’s still a podge. Never mind, let’s start eating.’

  ‘Why not telephone him?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t have a phone.’

  ‘Does he live nearby?’

  ‘Not far away, Rue Popincourt. I wonder what it is he wants exactly. The other day, in my waiting room, there happened to be a newspaper with your photo on the front page.’

  Pardon was looking at Maigret.

  ‘Forgive me, my friend. I don’t quite know how it happened, but I mentioned that I knew you. I may even have added that you were a friend of mine.

  ‘“And is he really like they say?” Lagrange asked me.

  ‘I said yes, you were a man who . . .’

  ‘Who what?’

  ‘Oh never mind, I just said what I thought while I was examining him. He has diabetes. And some glandular problems. He comes in a couple of times a week, because he’s very anxious about his health. The next time he was there, he talked about you again, wanted to know if I saw you often, and I said we had dinner together once a month. And that’s when he pressed me to invite him, which surprised me, since we hadn’t seen each other since Henri-IV, and my only contact with him was at the surgery. Let’s eat.’

  The brandade of cod was delicious and Pardon had managed to track down a dry white wine from the Nice region that made a perfect accompaniment. After the mention of overweight people, the conversation turned to redheads.

  ‘Yes, there’s always one redhead in every class at school!’

  This led to the topic of genetic theory. They usually ended up talking about medicine, and Madame Maigret knew that her husband enjoyed that.

  ‘Married, is he?’

  With their coffee, they had returned to the subject of Lagrange, for some reason. The blue of the evening, a deep velvety blue, had gradually taken over from the crimson sunset; but they had not yet lit the lamps, and through the French windows they could see the wrought-iron curlicues of the balcony balustrade outlined in black. From the corner of a nearby street came the strains of an accordion, and on a neighbouring balcony, the low voices of a couple in conversation.

  ‘He was, he told me, but his wife died long ago.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s in business, rather vague business, probably. His visiting card says “Financial administrator”, and gives an address in Rue Tronchet. I rang the number one day to cancel an appointment, and I was told that those offices had not existed for many years.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Two or three. A daughter notably, if I remember correctly, and a boy for whom he was hoping to find a steady job.’

  The talk returned to medicine. Jussieu, who had also worked at the Sainte-Anne Institute, recalled memories of the celebrated Doctor Charcot. Madame Pardon was knitting and explaining some tricky stitch to Madame Maigret. They lit the lamps. There were a few mosquitoes, and it was eleven o’clock when Maigret rose to leave.

  They left Jussieu at the corner of the boulevard, since he was taking the Métro from Place Voltaire. Maigret was feeling a little full, because of the brandade, or perhaps because of the southern wine.

  His wife had taken h
is arm, something she hardly ever did unless they were walking home and she wanted to say something. How could he tell? She hadn’t opened her mouth, but he was nevertheless waiting for her to.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he finally grunted.

  ‘You won’t be angry?’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I’m thinking about that young man this morning. I was wondering whether, when we get home, you might telephone to check in case anything has happened.’

  She was expressing herself obliquely, but he understood. She meant ‘to check he hasn’t killed himself’.

  Curiously enough, that was not what Maigret thought might have occurred. It was just a feeling, without any firm basis, but he had not been imagining a suicide. He was vaguely anxious, but reluctant to let it show.

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  ‘I didn’t pay attention to his clothes. But I think he was wearing something dark, navy blue perhaps.’

  ‘His hair?’

  ‘Fairish. Well, blond.’

  ‘Thin?’

  ‘Yes.

  ‘Nice-looking boy?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  He would have sworn that she was blushing.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t look closely at him, you know. But I remember his hands most of all, because he was so nervous, fiddling with the brim of his hat. He didn’t dare sit down. I had to push a chair forward for him. He seemed to expect me to throw him out any minute.’

  Once they were back home, Maigret telephoned the night desk of the city police, where all emergency calls were logged.

  ‘Maigret here. Anything to report?’

  ‘Just the usual at Bercy, chief.’

  Which meant the drunks outside the Wine Depot at Bercy.

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Bit of a fight on Quai de Charenton. Wait a bit. Yes. In the late afternoon, a woman’s corpse was pulled out of the Saint-Martin Canal.’

  ‘Identified?’

  ‘Yes. Local prostitute.’

  ‘And no suicides?’

  This was to reassure his wife, who was listening, hat in hand, in the bedroom doorway.

  ‘No, nothing like that yet. Should I call you if there’s anything new?’

  He hesitated. It troubled him to seem interested in this business, even – or perhaps especially – in front of his wife.

  ‘If you like.’

  There were no calls that night. Madame Maigret woke him in the morning with his coffee, and the bedroom windows were already open: they could hear workmen loading crates on to a truck in front of the warehouse opposite.

  ‘You see, he hasn’t killed himself!’ he said, as if taking his revenge.

  ‘Perhaps they don’t know about it yet.’

  He arrived at Quai des Orfèvres at nine, and met up with colleagues for the daily report in the commissioner’s office. Routine matters only. Paris was quiet. They had a description of the man who had killed the woman pulled out of the canal. His arrest was only a matter of time. They would no doubt find him dead drunk in some bar before the day was out.

  At about eleven, there was a call for Maigret.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Doctor Pardon.’

  At the other end of the line, the doctor seemed hesitant.

  ‘Forgive me for troubling you at the office. Last night, I was telling you about Lagrange, who had asked to come to dine with us. Well, this morning, on my rounds, I was going past the place he lives, on Rue Popincourt. So I went in, thinking that he had perhaps been taken ill. Hello? Are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m listening.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have called you, only, after you left last night, my wife told me the story of the young man.’

  ‘Which young man?’

  ‘The young man and the revolver. It seems Madame Maigret told my wife that yesterday morning—’

  ‘Yes. So, what is it?’

  ‘Lagrange would be furious if he knew I was alerting you. I found him in a queer state. In the first place, he let me knock several times at the door without answering, and I was getting concerned because the concierge had said he was at home. In the end he opened the door, barefoot, in his nightshirt, looking haggard, and he seemed relieved to see that it was me.

  ‘“I apologize about last night,” he said, going back to bed. “I felt ill. I’m still not feeling well. Did you mention me to the chief inspector?”’

  ‘And what did you say?’ Maigret asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I took his pulse and his blood pressure. He was looking very poorly. He looked, in fact, as if he was in shock. The lodgings were very untidy. He hadn’t had anything to eat, nor even had a cup of coffee. I asked him if he was alone, and he immediately took fright.

  ‘“Are you afraid I might have a heart attack, is that it?” he asked.

  ‘“No, no. But I was just a bit surprised—”

  ‘“At what?”

  ‘“Don’t your children live with you?”

  ‘“Only my youngest son. My daughter left home when she was twenty-one. And the older boy is married.”

  ‘“The younger one is at work, is he?”

  ‘Then he began to cry, and I got the impression that this big fat man was crumpling up like a pricked balloon.

  ‘“I don’t know,” he sobbed. “He’s not here. He didn’t come home.”

  ‘“Since when?”

  ‘“I don’t know. I’m alone, I’m going to die on my own.”

  ‘“Where does your son work?”

  ‘“I don’t even know if he has a job, He never tells me anything. He went out . . .”’

  Maigret was listening with a serious expression.

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘More or less. I tried to reassure him. He was pathetic. As a rule, he keeps up appearances or tries to. Seeing him in these sordid lodgings, lying sick in a bed that hadn’t been made for days—’

  ‘Is his son in the habit of spending the night away from home?’

  ‘No, from what I gathered. It would be a coincidence, of course, if it turned out to be this young man who—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Nothing for the moment. Is the father genuinely sick?’

  ‘As I said, he looks as if he’s in shock. His heart’s not too good. He’s lying there in bed, sweating away, and terrified he’s going to die.’

  ‘You did the right thing phoning me, Pardon.’

  ‘I was rather afraid you’d laugh at me.’

  ‘I didn’t know my wife had told anyone about the revolver.’

  ‘Have I put my foot in it?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  He buzzed the office boy.

  ‘Nobody waiting to see me?’

  ‘No, sir. Apart from the madman.’

  ‘Send him to Lucas.’

  This was a regular visitor, a harmless madman who came along every week to offer his services to the police.

  Maigret still hesitated. Out of human respect, truth be told. This story, if you looked at it one way, might indeed seem rather ridiculous.

  Once on the embankment, he was on the point of borrowing one of the police drivers, then, still out of a kind of modesty, decided to go to Rue Popincourt by taxi. That made it less official. And that way, there wouldn’t be anyone to laugh at him.

  2.

  Concerning a concierge who shows no curiosity and a gentleman of a certain age who peeps through the keyhole

  The concierge’s lodge, to the left of the archway, was like a hole in the wall, lit all day long by a yellowish lamp dangling from a wire. Its entire area was taken up with things that seemed to have been fitted together from a construction kit: a stove, a very high bed topped with a red eiderdown, a round table covered with an oilcloth, and an armchair occupied by a large ginger cat.

  The concierge did not open the door but observed Maigret through the glass window, and since he did not go away, resigned herself to opening it. Her head
then appeared framed by the panel, like an enlarged photograph, faded and out of focus, the kind they take at fairgrounds. Her black hair looked dyed, and her face was colourless and without contours. She waited. He said:

  ‘Monsieur Lagrange, please?’

  She did not reply at once, so he thought she might be deaf. Finally, she let fall, in a desperately bored tone:

  ‘Across the courtyard, third floor left.’

  ‘Is he at home?’

  It was not so much boredom as indifference, and perhaps contempt, or even hatred, for anything outside her aquarium. She had a whining voice.

  ‘If the doctor came to see him this morning, he’s probably in.’

  ‘Nobody else has called since Doctor Pardon?’

  Mentioning the name made it seem as if he was well informed.

  ‘He wanted me to go over there.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘The doctor. He wanted to give me a bit of money to go and do some cleaning and make a meal.’

  ‘Did you go?’

  She shook her head without explaining.

  ‘Why not?’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Don’t you get on with Monsieur Lagrange?’

  ‘I’ve only been here two months.’

  ‘Does the previous concierge live round here?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  It would be useless, he knew, to try to get any more out of her. To this woman, the entire property, a six-storey apartment block facing the street and a three-storey building at the far end of the courtyard, with its tenants, artisans’ workshops, children, comings and goings, all represented the enemy, whose sole reason for existing was to disturb her peace and quiet.

  As he came out of the dark, cool entrance, the courtyard looked almost cheerful, there was even grass growing between the cobblestones, and the sun was striking directly on to the façade of the rear building, with its cream-coloured plasterwork. A joiner was sawing wood in his workshop which gave off an agreeable smell, and a baby was asleep in a pram, its mother peering from time to time out of a first-floor window.