Maigret's Childhood Friend Read online

  ‘Was there any money in the apartment?’

  ‘It’s possible … I couldn’t swear to it … What I do know is that she was suspicious of banks.’

  They chose one of the little black cars lined up in the courtyard, and Janvier sat down at the wheel.

  ‘Are you trying to make me believe that, even though you were living with her, you didn’t know where she kept her savings?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  He wanted to say: ‘Stop acting the clown.’

  Did he feel sorry for him?

  ‘How many rooms are there in the apartment?’

  ‘There’s a sitting room, a dining room, an en-suite bedroom and a small kitchen.’

  ‘Not counting the wardrobe.’

  ‘Not counting the wardrobe.’

  Slipping between the other cars, Janvier tried to work out what they were talking about from the few retorts exchanged.

  ‘I swear, Maigret …’

  And he still didn’t call him Jules, because at school they always called one another by their surnames.

  As the three men passed in front of the lodge, Maigret noticed the tulle curtain of the glass door moving and, behind it, a huge and bulky concierge. Her face matched her body and, blank-faced, she stared at them as fixedly as a life-sized portrait or a statue.

  The lift was cramped, and Maigret found himself pressed up against Florentin, his eyes very close to those of his old schoolmate, and he felt awkward. What was the son of the Moulins patissier thinking about right now? Was it fear that made him grimace constantly, even though he attempted to assume a natural expression, or even to smile?

  Was he Joséphine Papet’s murderer? What had he done for an hour before showing up at Quai des Orfèvres?

  They crossed the third-floor landing, and Florentin quite naturally took a bunch of keys from his pocket. After a tiny hallway, they entered a sitting room where Maigret thought he had gone back fifty years in time, if not more. The old rose silk curtains were draped as in those days, and held by tie-backs of thick braided silk. On the parquet floor, a carpet with faded colours. Plush and silk everywhere, and doilies, squares of embroidery or lace on fake Louis XVI armchairs.

  Near the window, a sofa covered with velvet, with a multitude of cushions that were still crumpled as if someone had just sat down on them. A pedestal table. A lamp with a pink shade on a gilded stand.

  This must have been Josée’s favourite corner. She had a record player within reach, chocolates, magazines and several romantic novels. The television was just opposite her, on the other side of the room.

  On the wallpaper, patterned with little flowers, a number of canvases hung, showing highly detailed landscapes.

  Florentin, who was reading Maigret’s expression, confirmed what he was thinking:

  ‘That was where she sat most often.’

  ‘What about you?’

  The antiques dealer pointed to an old leather armchair that clashed with the rest of the furniture.

  ‘I bought that for her.’

  The dining room was just as old-fashioned, just as banal, just as stuffy, and here too there were velvet curtains, with pot plants on both window-sills.

  The door to the bedroom was half open. Florentin was reluctant to go through it. Maigret went in first and, less than two metres away, saw the body lying on the carpet. As is often the case, the hole in the throat looked larger than the calibre of a bullet. She had lost a lot of blood, and yet her face showed nothing but astonishment.

  As far as he could tell, the woman was short, plump and gentle, one of those women who make you think of well-cooked stews, of lovingly potted jams.

  Maigret looked around for something.

  ‘I haven’t seen a weapon,’ his schoolmate announced, having guessed. ‘Unless she fell on it, which strikes me as unlikely.’

  The telephone was in the sitting room. Maigret decided to get the indispensable formalities out of the way.

  ‘Janvier, phone the local station first of all. Ask the inspector to bring a doctor. Then let the prosecutor’s office know.’

  Moers’ forensic team arrived a few moments later. Maigret had hoped to take a few minutes to carry out an initial inspection in peace. He went into the bathroom, where the towels were pink. There was a lot of pink in the apartment. When he opened the door of the wardrobe, which consisted of a kind of corridor leading nowhere, he found more pink, the candy pink of a bed-jacket, the brighter pink of a summer dress. The other clothes were also in pastel colours, apple green, pale blue.

  ‘You don’t have any suits here?’

  ‘It would be difficult …’ Florentin murmured, slightly awkwardly. ‘As far as the others are concerned, she’s supposed to live on her own.’

  Obviously! That was old-fashioned too: these mature men who came once or twice a week, living under the illusion that they were keeping a mistress, while remaining unaware of one another.

  But were they really all unaware of one another?

  Back in the bedroom, Maigret opened drawers, found invoices, underwear, a case containing a few inexpensive jewels.

  It was six o’clock.

  ‘The Wednesday gentleman should have arrived by now,’ he observed.

  ‘Perhaps he came upstairs and, when he rang the bell and got no answer, he left again?’

  Janvier announced:

  ‘The inspector is on the way. The deputy prosecutor will be here any minute, with an examining magistrate.’

  This was the point in an investigation that Maigret hated most. Five or six of them stood looking at each other, then looking at the body with the doctor kneeling next to it. A pure formality. The doctor could only confirm the death, and the details would come only after the post-mortem. The deputy prosecutor also took note, on behalf of the government.

  The examining magistrate looked at Maigret as if asking him what he thought, when he didn’t yet think anything. As to the police chief, he was in a hurry to get back to his office.

  ‘Keep me up to date,’ murmured the magistrate, who was about forty and must have been new to Paris.

  His name was Page. He had risen through the ranks, starting with a sub-prefecture and then passing through a succession of increasingly large cities.

  Moers and his men were waiting in the drawing room, where one of the experts was looking around for fingerprints.

  When the officers had left, Maigret said to them:

  ‘Your turn, boys … First some photographs of the victim, before the van comes to get her.’

  When he headed towards the door, Florentin wanted to follow him.

  ‘No. You stay here. You, Janvier, question the neighbours on the landing and, if necessary, the ones on the floor upstairs, to find out if they heard anything.’

  Maigret went downstairs. The house was old-fashioned, but still very presentable. The crimson carpet was fixed to each step with brass bars. Almost all the door-handles were polished, as was a plaque that announced: ‘Mademoiselle Vial, corsets and girdles made to measure’.

  He found the monumental concierge at her door, behind the curtain, which she held aside with sausage-like fingers. When he made as if to enter, she took a step back, almost without moving, and he pushed the door open.

  She looked at him as indifferently as if he were some random object and didn’t flinch when he showed her his Police Judiciaire detective chief inspector’s badge.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard?’

  She didn’t open her mouth, but her eyes seemed to say, ‘Heard what?’

  The lodge was clean, with a circular table in the middle and two canaries in a cage. A kitchen could be seen in the background.

  ‘Mademoiselle Papet is dead.’

  She spoke at last. For she could indeed speak, in a slightly faint voice that displayed the same indifference as her expression. Or was it hostility rather than indifference? She looked at the world through her door and hated it, all of it.

  ‘Is that why there was all that n
oise on the stairs? There are at least ten of them up there, isn’t that right?’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘I don’t see why my name should be of interest to you.’

  ‘Because I have a certain number of questions to ask you, I have to mention your name in my report.’

  ‘Madame Blanc.’

  ‘Are you a widow?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does your husband live here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he leave you?’

  ‘Nineteen years ago.’

  At last she sat down on an enormous armchair that matched her size, and Maigret sat down too.

  ‘Did anyone go up to Mademoiselle Papet’s between five thirty and six o’clock?’

  ‘Yes. At five forty.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Wednesday one, of course. I’ve never asked them their names. A tall man, thinning hair, always wears dark colours.’

  ‘Did he stay up there for long?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t speak to you when he came back down?’

  ‘He asked me if the Papet woman had gone out.’

  He had to drag the words out of her one by one.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That I hadn’t seen her.’

  ‘Did he seem surprised?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was tiring, particularly since her facial expression was as motionless as her obese body.

  ‘You didn’t see him earlier in the afternoon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘At about three thirty, for example, you didn’t see anyone go upstairs? Were you here?’

  ‘I was here and no one went upstairs.’

  ‘No one came down either? At about four o’clock?’

  ‘Only at twenty past four.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That guy …’

  ‘Who do you mean by “that guy”?’

  ‘The one who arrived with you. I’d rather not call that guy anything else.’

  ‘Joséphine Papet’s live-in lover?’

  She smiled with bitter irony.

  ‘He hasn’t talked to you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t even have opened the door to him.’

  ‘Are you sure that no one else went upstairs or downstairs between three thirty and four thirty?’

  Having said it once, she didn’t take the time to repeat herself.

  ‘Do you know your tenant’s other friends?’

  ‘Why do you call them friends?’

  ‘Her other visitors … How many of them are there?’

  She moved her lips as if murmuring prayers in church and said at last:

  ‘Four. Apart from him.’

  ‘There were never any unpleasant encounters between them?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘You spend the whole day in that room?’

  ‘Except in the morning, when I do the shopping, and then when I clean the stairs.’

  ‘No one came to keep you company today?’

  ‘No one ever comes to keep me company.’

  ‘Did Mademoiselle Papet ever go out?’

  ‘At about eleven o’clock in the morning, to go shopping. She didn’t go far. Sometimes, in the evening, she went to the cinema with the guy.’

  ‘And on Sunday?’

  ‘Sometimes they went out in a car.’

  ‘Whose is the car?’

  ‘Hers, of course.’

  ‘And who drives?’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Do you know where the car is?’

  ‘In a garage on Rue La Bruyère.’

  She didn’t ask him what her tenant had died of. She had as little curiosity as she had energy, and Maigret looked at her with mounting bewilderment.

  ‘Mademoiselle Papet was murdered.’

  ‘That was to be expected, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘With all those men …’

  ‘She was killed by a bullet fired almost point-blank.’

  She listened without a word.

  ‘She never confided in you?’

  ‘We weren’t friends.’

  ‘Did you hate her?’

  ‘That’s not it either.’

  In the end it was becoming oppressive, and Maigret wiped his brow, left the lodge and was happy to be back on the pavement. The van from the Forensic Institute had just arrived. The men would take out the stretcher, and he preferred to cross the street and go into the Grand Saint-Georges, where he ordered a beer at the counter.

  The murder of Joséphine Papet hadn’t caused a stir in the area, not even in the house where she had lived for many years.

  He saw the van driving away. When he went back into the house, the concierge was at her post, and she looked at him just as she had done the first time. He took the lift and rang the doorbell. Janvier opened up.

  ‘Have you questioned the neighbours?’

  ‘The ones I was able to find. There are only two apartments to the front, on each floor, and only one overlooking the courtyard. Next door I found a certain Madame Sauveur, a middle-aged woman, very pleasant, very elegant. She stayed at home all afternoon, listening to the radio and knitting.

  ‘She did hear a noise, like a muffled explosion, around mid-afternoon, and she thought it was a car or bus backfiring.’

  ‘She didn’t hear the door opening and closing again?’

  ‘I checked. You can’t hear from her apartment. The building is quite old, and the walls are thick.’

  ‘On the fourth floor?’

  ‘A couple with two children went off to the country or the seaside a week ago. To the back there’s a retired railwayman who lives with his grandson. He didn’t hear anything.’

  Florentin was standing by the open window.

  ‘Was it already open this afternoon?’ Maigret asked him.

  ‘I think so … Yes …’

  ‘And the bedroom window?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because Josée was always careful to close it again when she had a visitor.’

  Opposite, four or five girls could be seen sewing in a studio where a mannequin covered in coarse cloth stood on a black wooden stand.

  Florentin looked worried, even though he always made an effort to keep a smile on his face. It gave him a strange rictus that reminded Maigret of the Lycée Banville, when his classmate got caught by the teacher he was imitating behind his back.

  ‘Do you enjoy reminding us of our origins, Monsieur Florentin?’ the little, pale, fair-haired man who taught them Latin used to say in those days.

  Moers’ colleagues went through the apartment with a fine-tooth comb, and nothing, not so much as a speck of dust, escaped their attention. In spite of the open window, Maigret was hot. He didn’t like this business, which repelled him slightly. He also hated finding himself in an awkward situation. In spite of himself, images of the past appeared in his mind.

  He knew practically nothing of what had become of his former fellow-pupils, and the one who had made a sudden reappearance was in a more than delicate position.

  ‘Have you talked to the war memorial?’

  Maigret looked at Florentin in surprise.

  ‘The concierge. That’s what I call her. I bet she’s got a pretty harsh name for me.’

  ‘“That guy” …’

  ‘Right! I’m that guy. What did she say to you?’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve told me the facts as they happened?’

  ‘Why would I have lied to you?’

  ‘You’ve always lied. You used to lie for fun.’

  ‘That was forty years ago!’

  ‘You don’t seem to have changed that much.’

  ‘If I’d had something to hide from you, would I have gone to see you?’

  ‘What else could you have done?’

  ‘Gone away. Gone back to my place on Boulevard Rochechouart.’

  ‘To be arrested tomorrow morn
ing?’

  ‘I could have fled, crossed the border.’

  ‘Have you got any money?’

  Florentin blushed, and Maigret felt a little sorry for him. When he was young, his long clownish face, his jokes and grimaces had been amusing.

  Now he wasn’t funny any more, and it was rather painful to see him resorting to his old face-pulling.

  ‘But you don’t think I killed her?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know me.’

  ‘I last saw you twenty years ago, on Place de la Madeleine, and before that we have to go as far back as the lycée in Moulins.’

  ‘Do I look like a murderer?’

  ‘It takes only a few minutes, a few seconds, to become a murderer. Before that you’re a man like any other.’

  ‘Why would I have killed her? We were the best friends in the world.’

  ‘Just friends?’

  ‘Of course not, but at my age I’m not going to make out it was some sort of grand passion.’

  ‘And she was the same?’

  ‘I think she loved me.’

  ‘Was she jealous?’

  ‘I gave her no reason to be … You still haven’t told me what the witch downstairs told you.’

  Janvier looked at his boss with a certain curiosity, because it was probably the first time that he had seen an interrogation play out in such conditions. Maigret was obviously uneasy, hesitating, just as he hesitated at every moment between familiarity and formality.

  ‘She didn’t see anyone go upstairs.’

  ‘She’s lying. Either that or she was in her kitchen.’

  ‘She claims not to have left the lodge.’

  ‘That’s impossible, for heaven’s sake! The killer had to come from somewhere … Unless …’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘He was already in the building …’

  ‘A tenant?’

  Florentin quickly pounced on that hypothesis.

  ‘Why not? I’m not the only man in the block.’

  ‘Did Josée socialize with some of the tenants?’

  ‘How could I know? I’m not always here. I’ve got a job. I have to earn my living.’

  It sounded fake. Another bit of play-acting on the part of Florentin, who had been play-acting all his life.

  ‘Janvier, I want you to examine the building from top to bottom, knock on all the doors, question everyone you can find. I’m going back to headquarters.’