Maigret and the Headless Corpse Page 2

  ‘There isn’t a current like in a river, of course. But with every sluice, the water moves almost invisibly all along the reach.’

  ‘So we’d have to search all the way to the next lock?’

  ‘The authorities pay, and you give the orders,’ Victor said, puffing at his cigarette.

  ‘Will it take long?’

  ‘It depends where I find the rest of him. That’s if the rest of him is in the canal, obviously!’

  Why would part of the body have been thrown in the canal and the rest on a patch of waste ground, for example?

  ‘Carry on.’

  Cadet signalled to his assistant to moor the boat a little further upstream and got ready to put the brass helmet on again.

  Maigret took Judel and Lapointe aside. They formed a little group on the quayside, and the onlookers watched them with the respect people unconsciously show to those in official positions.

  ‘Just in case, you should have the waste grounds and building sites in the area searched thoroughly.’

  ‘I already thought of that,’ Judel said. ‘I was just waiting for your instructions to start.’

  ‘How many men do you have?’

  ‘This morning, two. By this afternoon, I can have three.’

  ‘Try to find out if there have been any fights locally in the last few days, if anyone heard any screams, calls for help.’

  ‘Yes, chief.’

  Maigret left the uniformed officer to keep watch on the human arm that still lay on the quayside under a tarpaulin.

  ‘Coming, Lapointe?’

  He walked to Popaul’s, the bar on the corner, which was painted a bright red, and opened the glass door. A number of factory workers from the area, already in their work clothes, were having a bite to eat at the counter.

  ‘What can I get you?’ the owner hastened to ask.

  ‘Do you have a telephone?’

  As he spoke, he saw it. It was attached to the wall, not in a booth but right next to the counter.

  ‘Come on, Lapointe.’

  He had no desire to make a call in public.

  ‘Aren’t you having a drink?’

  Popaul looked offended.

  ‘Later,’ Maigret promised him.

  All along the quayside there were one-storey houses, as well as apartment blocks, workshops and big concrete buildings containing offices.

  ‘We’re bound to find a bistro with a phone booth.’

  They continued on their way. On the other side of the canal, the faded flag and blue lamp of the police station came into view, with the dark mass of the Hôpital Saint-Louis behind it.

  They walked almost 300 metres before finding a dim-looking bistro. Maigret pushed open the door. They had to go down two stone steps. The floor consisted of little dark-red tiles, the kind found in buildings in Marseille.

  There was nobody in the room, only a big ginger cat lying near the stove. It rose lazily, padded towards a half-open door and disappeared.

  ‘Is there anyone here?’ Maigret called.

  They could hear the rapid ticking of a cuckoo clock. The air smelled of brandy and white wine, brandy more than wine, with a whiff of coffee.

  There was movement in a back room. A woman’s voice said, with a touch of weariness:

  ‘Just coming!’

  The ceiling was low and smoke-dulled, the walls blackened, the room shrouded in a semi-darkness crossed by a few sunbeams, like the light through stained-glass windows in a church. There was a piece of cardboard stuck to the wall, on which were the words, roughly written:

  Light meals throughout the day

  And, on another notice:

  Customers may bring their own food

  Right now, nobody seemed tempted by this proposition. Maigret and Lapointe were probably the first customers of the day. There was a phone booth in a corner. Maigret wouldn’t go to it until the woman appeared.

  When at last she arrived, she was just finishing sticking pins in her dark brown, almost black hair. She was thin and ageless, forty or forty-five perhaps, and she came towards them with a glum expression on her face, her felt slippers dragging over the tiles.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Maigret looked at Lapointe.

  ‘Is the white wine good?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Two glasses of white wine. Do you have a telephone token?’

  He went and shut himself in the booth and called the prosecutor’s office to make his verbal report. The man at the other end of the line was a deputy, and he expressed the same surprise as everyone else on learning that the arm fished out of the canal was a man’s.

  ‘There’s a diver searching at the moment. He thinks the rest of the body, if it’s there at all, is somewhere upstream. I’d like personally for Dr Paul to examine the arm as soon as possible.’

  ‘Can I call you back where you are? I’ll try to get hold of him right away and come back to you.’

  The number was on the telephone. He gave it to the deputy and walked back to the counter, where two glasses had been poured.

  ‘Cheers!’ he said, turning to the woman.

  She didn’t appear to have heard him. She was looking at them without any friendliness, waiting for them to go so that she could return to whatever it was she had been doing, most likely getting dressed.

  She must have been pretty once. At least, like everyone, she had been young. Now her eyes, her mouth, her whole body exuded weariness. Could it be that she was ill and waiting for her next attack? Some people who know that at a particular hour they are going to start suffering again have that expression, subdued and yet tense, like drug addicts waiting for the hour of their dose.

  ‘I’m expecting a phone call,’ Maigret said as if to apologize.

  It was a public place, of course, like all bars and cafés, a place that was somehow anonymous, and yet they both had the impression that they were intruding, that they had arrived somewhere they didn’t belong.

  ‘Your wine’s good.’

  It was true. Most bistros in Paris advertise a ‘locally produced wine’, but more often than not it’s a doctored wine straight from the warehouses at Bercy. This one, though, had a distinctive flavour that Maigret was trying to identify.

  ‘Sancerre?’ he asked.

  ‘No. It comes from a little village near Poitiers.’

  That was why it had an aftertaste of flint.

  ‘Do you have family there?’

  She didn’t reply, and Maigret admired the way she was able to remain motionless, looking at them in silence, with no expression on her face. The cat had come to join her and rubbed against her bare legs.

  ‘Where’s your husband?’

  ‘As it happens, he’s gone to get some.’

  Get some wine, was what she meant. It wasn’t easy to maintain the conversation. Just as Maigret was motioning to her to refill the glasses, the telephone came to his rescue.

  ‘Yes, speaking. Did you get hold of Paul? … Is he free? … In an hour? Good, I’ll be there.’

  What he heard next made him pull a face. The deputy was telling him that the case had been entrusted to Judge Coméliau, almost Maigret’s personal enemy, the fussiest, most conformist magistrate in the prosecutor’s office.

  ‘He’s expressly asked you to keep him informed.’

  ‘I know.’

  That meant that Maigret would receive five or six telephone calls from Coméliau every day, and that he would have to go to his office every morning to bring him up to date.

  ‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘We’ll do our best!’

  ‘It’s not my fault, inspector. He was the only judge available and …’

  The sunbeam had moved slightly and now hit Maigret’s glass.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he said, taking money from his pocket. ‘What do I owe you?’

  And once they were outside:

  ‘Did you bring the car?’

  ‘Yes. It’s parked near the lock.’

  The wine had put colour in Lapo
inte’s cheeks, and his eyes were a little shiny. From where they were, they could see a group of onlookers on the quayside watching the diver’s movements. When Maigret and the inspector came level with them, Victor’s assistant pointed to a package lying on the deck of the boat, a bulkier package than the first one.

  ‘A leg and a foot,’ he said, spitting in the water.

  The wrapping was less damaged than with the first discovery, and Maigret didn’t feel the need to examine it closely.

  ‘Do you think it’s worth calling for a van?’ he asked Lapointe.

  ‘There must be room in the boot.’

  The idea didn’t appeal to either of them, but nor did they want to keep Dr Paul waiting. He was expecting them at the Forensic Institute, a bright modern building on the banks of the Seine, not far from the place where the canal joins the river.

  ‘What shall I do?’ Lapointe asked.

  Maigret preferred to say nothing. Overcoming his revulsion, Lapointe carried the two packages, one after the other, to the boot of the car.

  ‘Do they smell?’ Maigret asked him when he returned to the quayside.

  And Lapointe, who was holding his hands away from his body, wrinkled his nose and nodded.

  Dr Paul was in his white coat and rubber gloves, chain smoking. He liked to say that tobacco is one of the most reliable antiseptics, and in the course of a post-mortem he sometimes got through two whole packets of cigarettes.

  Bent over the marble table, working with enthusiasm and even good humour, he spoke between puffs on his cigarette.

  ‘Of course, nothing I can tell you now is final. First of all, I’d like to see the rest of the body, which will tell us more than an arm and a leg, and secondly, before I express a firm opinion, I’d need to run a number of tests.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘As far as I can judge at first sight, the man must have been between fifty and sixty, closer to fifty than sixty. Look at this hand.’

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘It’s a wide, strong hand which must have done heavy manual work at some time.’

  ‘A factory worker.’

  ‘No. More likely a farm labourer. I’d wager, though, that it’s been many years since this hand last held a heavy tool. The man didn’t exactly look after himself, as you can see from the nails, especially the toenails.’

  ‘A tramp?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I repeat: I’d need to see the rest, if it’s found, before I could state a firm opinion.’

  ‘How long ago did he die?’

  ‘Again, this is just a hypothesis. Don’t get carried away, I might tell you the opposite tonight or tomorrow. For the moment, I’d say three days, no more than that. And I’d be tempted to say less.’

  ‘Not last night?’

  ‘No. But the night before last, maybe.’

  Maigret and Lapointe were also smoking, avoiding looking down at the marble slab as far as possible. Dr Paul, though, seemed to enjoy his work, handling his tools with the skill of a conjuror.

  He was about to get back into his everyday clothes when Maigret was called to the telephone. It was Judel, from Quai de Valmy.

  ‘They’ve found the torso!’ he announced, sounding quite excited.

  ‘Not the head?’

  ‘Not yet. Victor says that may be more difficult. The weight will have sunk it deeper in the sludge. He also found an empty wallet and a woman’s handbag.’

  ‘Near the trunk?’

  ‘No. Quite far. There doesn’t seem to be any connection. Like he says, every time he dives in the canal, he could bring enough things up to the surface to start a stall at the flea market. Just before finding the trunk, he brought up a metal bedstead and two wash-basins.’

  Paul was waiting before taking his gloves off, holding his hands apart.

  ‘Something new?’ he asked.

  Maigret nodded. Then, to Judel:

  ‘Can you get it to me at the Forensic Institute?’

  ‘Possibly …’

  ‘I’ll wait here. Make it quick, because Dr Paul …’

  They waited in the main doorway, where the air was cooler and more pleasant and from where they could watch the constant bustle on Pont d’Austerlitz. On the other side of the Seine, some barges and a little sea-going boat were unloading goods outside the bonded warehouses. There was something young, something lively, in the rhythm of Paris this morning. A season was starting, a brand-new spring, and people were optimistic.

  ‘No tattoos or scars, I assume?’

  ‘Not on the parts I’ve examined, no. From his skin, I’d say he was a man who lived indoors.’

  ‘He seems quite hairy.’

  ‘Yes. I can almost describe to you the kind of person he was. Dark-skinned, not very tall, short but stocky, with bulging muscles, thick dark hair on the arms, hands, legs and chest. The French countryside produces lots of people like that: sturdy, wilful, stubborn. I’m curious to see his head.’

  ‘When we find it!’

  A quarter of an hour later, two uniformed officers brought them the trunk. Dr Paul was almost rubbing his hands as he walked to the marble slab like a cabinetmaker to his work bench.

  ‘This confirms we aren’t dealing with a professional job,’ he muttered. ‘I mean the man wasn’t cut up by a butcher, or by a specialist from La Villette, let alone a surgeon! For the bones, an ordinary metal saw was used. For the rest, they seem to have used a big carving knife, the kind that’s found in restaurants and in most kitchens. It must have taken a while. They had to start again several times.’

  He paused.

  ‘Look at this hairy chest …’

  Maigret and Lapointe merely glanced at it.

  ‘No obvious wounds?’

  ‘I can’t see any. What’s certain, of course, is that the man didn’t die from drowning.’

  It was almost funny. The idea that a man whose body parts had been found in the canal might have actually drowned …

  ‘I’ll look at the internal organs later, in particular, in so far as I can, the stomach contents. Are you staying?’

  Maigret shook his head. It wasn’t a spectacle he particularly enjoyed, and he was in urgent need of a drink, not wine this time, but something a lot stronger, to get rid of the bad taste he had in his mouth, a taste he thought of as a corpse taste.

  ‘Hold on a bit, Maigret … What was I saying? … You see this lighter line, and these small pale spots on the stomach?’

  Maigret said yes without looking.

  ‘The line is the scar left by an operation performed several years ago. An operation for appendicitis.’

  ‘And the spots?’

  ‘That’s the oddest thing. I can’t swear I’m right, but I’m almost sure they’re marks left by shotgun pellets. That would confirm that the man lived in the countryside at some time in his life, a farm labourer or a gamekeeper, something like that. A long time ago, twenty years, maybe more, he must have been fired at with a shotgun. I count seven … no, eight scars of the same kind, in a rainbow arc. I’ve only seen that once before, and it wasn’t as regular. I’ll have to take a photograph of it for my records.’

  ‘Will you phone me?’

  ‘Where will you be? At headquarters?’

  ‘Yes, in my office. And I’ll probably have lunch on Place Dauphine.’

  ‘I’ll call you and let you know what I’ve discovered.’

  Once they were outside, in the sun, Maigret was the first to wipe his forehead. Lapointe was unable to stop himself from spitting several times as if he, too, had an acrid taste in his mouth.

  ‘I’ll have the boot of the car disinfected as soon as we get to headquarters,’ he said.

  Before getting in the car, they went into a bistro and had a glass of marc. It was so strong that Lapointe retched and held his hand in front of his mouth for a moment, his eyes filled with anxiety, wondering if he wasn’t going to vomit.

  At last he regained his composure.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he stam
mered.

  As they were going out, the owner of the bar said to one of his customers:

  ‘More people who came to identify a body. They all react like that.’

  Located as he was just opposite the Forensic Institute, he was used to it.

  2. The Bottle Wax

  For a brief moment, as Maigret entered the main corridor at Quai des Orfèvres, a gleam of gaiety played on his eyes, because today even this corridor, the greyest and grimmest on earth, was touched by the sun, at least in the form of a kind of luminous dust.

  Between the doors of the offices, people were waiting on backless benches, some with their wrists handcuffed. He was about to head for the commissioner’s office to bring him up to date with the discoveries at Quai de Valmy when a man stood up and touched the brim of his hat by way of greeting.

  With the familiarity of people who have been seeing each other every day for years, Maigret said:

  ‘Well, viscount, what do you think of this? You’re always complaining that it’s only prostitutes who are cut up into pieces …’

  The man everybody called the viscount did not blush, even though he had probably understood the allusion. He was a homosexual, a discreet one, admittedly. He had been ‘doing’ Quai des Orfèvres for more than fifteen years for a Paris newspaper, a press agency and some twenty provincial dailies.

  He was the last person to still dress the way people dressed in drawing-room comedies from the beginning of the century, and a monocle hung from a broad black ribbon over his chest. Perhaps it was because of that monocle, which he almost never used, that he had been given his nickname?

  ‘So they haven’t found the head yet?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘I’ve just phoned Judel, who says they haven’t. If you hear anything more, inspector, don’t forget me.’

  He went and sat down again on his bench while Maigret continued on his way to the commissioner’s office. The window of the office was open, and from here, too, barges could be seen moving along the Seine. The two men spoke for about ten minutes.

  When Maigret opened the door to his own office, a note was waiting for him on the blotting pad, and he knew immediately who it was from. As expected, it was a message from Judge Coméliau asking him to phone him as soon as he arrived.