Maigret's Little Joke and Other Stories Read online

  Pardon was in his surgery.

  “Tell me, do you know a doctor beginning with J who lives in the Boulevard Haussmann?”

  The doctor had also had time to read the newspaper.

  “I asked myself that very question over breakfast. I looked up the Medical Register. I was rather intrigued. It appears, in fact, that it’s a highly respected doctor involved, Dr. Jave, a former hospital surgeon, who now has a large private practice.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I’ve met him two or three times, but I haven’t set eyes on him for several years now.”

  “What sort of man?”

  “Do you mean, in the profession?”

  “In the first place, yes.”

  “A sound practitioner, who knows his job. He must be in his forties, probably forty-five. He’s a good-looking man. All one could hold against him, so far as it is a fault, is that he has specialized in patients from high society. It’s not for nothing that he’s set up in practice in the Boulevard Haussmann. I imagine he makes a lot of money.”

  “Married?”

  “So the paper says. I hadn’t heard about it. Look here, Maigret, I hope you’re not going to go running round to Headquarters to get yourself involved in this?”

  “I give you my promise. What about the other doctor they refer to?”

  “I haven’t been the only one this morning to telephone his colleagues. It’s pretty unusual for a business of this sort to occur in our profession and we’re as curious as concierges. Like most doctors going off on holiday, Jave took on a young locum for the time he would be away. I don’t know him personally and I don’t think I’ve met him. It’s a chap called Négrel, Gilbert Négrel, who’s about 30 and is one of Professor Lebier’s assistants. That’s a recommendation, as Lebier is known to be fussy about choosing his associates and to be difficult to live with.”

  “Are you very busy?”

  “Right now?”

  “Generally speaking.”

  “Less than usual, as most of my patients are on holiday. Why do you ask?”

  “I’d like to try and obtain as much information as possible about these two medicos.”

  “You’re not forgetting you’re on holiday, on doctor’s orders?”

  “I promise not to set foot in Police Headquarters.”

  “Which isn’t going to prevent your looking into the case as an amateur. Is that it?”

  “Roughly.”

  “Right. I’ll make a few telephone calls.”

  “Could we perhaps meet this evening?”

  “Why don’t you come and have dinner with us at home and bring your wife?”

  “No. I’m asking you to come with yours to a bistro somewhere. We’ll come and collect you about eight o’clock.”

  There and then Maigret ceased to be quite the same man he had been first thing that morning. He had stopped day-dreaming and feeling like a little boy not going to school.

  He went back to his place on the terrace, ordered another glass of beer and thought of Janvier, who was bound to be in a terrible state of excitement. Had Janvier attempted to telephone, him at Les Sables d’Olonne to ask his advice? Probably not. His heart would be set upon conducting the case, all by himself, to a successful conclusion.

  The chief-inspector was impatient to know more about it, but since he was for the time being no longer behind the scenes, he had to do as the rest of the public, wait for the papers in the afternoon.

  When he returned home for lunch, his wife looked at him with a frown, already sensing something in the wind.

  “You’ve met somebody?”

  “Not a soul. I’ve only telephoned to Pardon. We’re taking them out to dinner this evening in some bistro, I haven’t decided where yet.”

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m in fine form.”

  It was true. This short news-item in the newspaper had just given a point to his holiday and he wasn’t tempted to go to his office and take charge of the case. For once, he was merely a spectator and he was finding the situation amusing.

  “What are we doing this afternoon?”

  “We’ll go and take a walk along the Boulevard Haussmann and round that district.”

  She made no objection, didn’t ask him why. They had plenty of time to eat their meal without watching the clock, in front of the open window, which they didn’t often have the chance to do. Even the noises of Paris were not the same as usual. Instead of forming a confused symphony, the sounds, occurring less frequently, were becoming distinct; a taxi could be heard turning the corner of such and such a street, a lorry drawing up outside a particular house.

  “You’re not going to have a nap?”

  “No.”

  While she was busy washing up, then changing, he went downstairs once more to go and buy the evening papers. The case had become entitled to larger headlines.

  NEW PETIOT MURDER CASE

  WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN CUPBOARD

  TWO DOCTORS QUESTIONED

  The best of the articles, above the signature of little Lassagne, one of the sharpest-witted reporters, said :

  A murder case, which cannot fail to be widely discussed and hold some surprises in store, has come to light in one of the smartest neighbourhoods of Paris, in the Boulevard Haussmann, between the Rue de Miromesnil and the Rue de Courcelles.

  Despite the unwillingness the police have shown in providing information, we have been able, thanks to our own personal enquiries, to discover the following details.

  The second floor of No. 137 bis, Boulevard Haussmann, has been occupied for the past five years by Dr. Philippe Jave, aged forty-four, together with his wife and their three-year-old daughter.

  The Javes live in one of the two flats on the floor, the other being kept for the waiting-room and the luxurious consulting-rooms, for the doctor’s practice is one of the smartest and the majority of his patients feature in the Bottin Social Register.

  On July 1st the Javes, accompanied by the child’s nurse, left Paris for a six weeks’ stay at Cannes, where they had rented the Villa Marie-Thérèse.

  On the same date a young doctor, Dr. Négrel, took over his colleague’s place during consulting hours.

  Normally, apart from the nurse, Mlle. Jusserand, the Javes have two servants, but one of them, whose parents live in Normandy, took her holidays at the same time as her employers, and only Josépha Chauvet, fifty-one years old, remained in Paris.

  The living quarters being unoccupied, she only had to take charge of looking after the professional rooms.

  Dr. Négrel, who is a bachelor and lives in rooms in the Rue des Saints-Pères, has been coming every morning at nine o’clock, taking note of any telephone calls, doing visits round the town, lunching in a restaurant, and at two o’clock returning to the Boulevard Haussmann for consultations.

  About six o’clock, he was free once more and Josépha Chauvet has been taking advantage of it to go and visit her daughter, who lives in the district, in the Rue Washington, where she spent nearly every night.

  What happened? Because of the silence on the part of the police, it is difficult for us to reconstruct the chain of events, but a certain number of facts have been ascertained.

  Last Saturday, Dr. Négrel left the surgery in the Boulevard Haussmann at half-past five, when Josépha was still there. During the course of the afternoon he had seen some half-dozen patients, of both sexes, and no one in the building had noticed any unusual arrivals or departures.

  On Sunday Dr. Négrel went to visit some friends in the country, while Josépha spent the day with her daughter in the Rue Washington, not returning till eight a.m. on Monday.

  She started as usual by running the vacuum-cleaner round the waiting-room, then she went through into the office which leads into the consulting-room.

  It was only on reaching this third room that she was struck by an unusual smell, “stale and sickly”, as she put it, but she did not trouble about it straight away.

  Ev
entually, a few minutes before nine o’clock, intrigued she opened the door into a fourth room, less spacious than the others, which had been turned into a laboratory. It was there that the smell was coming from; to be precise, from one of the cupboards.

  It was locked. The key was not in the keyhole. As Josépha was examining the cupboard, she heard footsteps behind her, and turning round, she caught sight of Dr. Négrel arriving.

  Did he give a start? Did he turn pale? The pieces of indirect evidence we have collected are contradictory. He is supposed to have said:

  “What are you doing there?”

  And she to have replied :

  “Can’t you smell anything?”

  She is said to have suggested a dead rat.

  “Didn’t Dr. Jave leave you the keys?”

  It must be understood that we are only reconstructing the facts as best we can. A few minutes later, Josépha left the building to go and fetch a locksmith from the Rue de Miromesnil and subsequently returned with him. Maigret wondered, as he read, where little Lassagne had unearthed these details. It wasn’t Josépha who had talked, he would have sworn. Still less Dr. Négrel. The concierge? It was possible. Perhaps also, from what followed, the locksmith? He read on:

  When the cupboard door was opened, they were confronted by the sight of the body of a woman completely naked, which had had to be bent double to fit into the rather confined space.

  In the absence of Chief-Detective-Inspector Maigret on holiday it was Inspector Janvier who arrived on the spot, accompanied by the police doctor and representatives from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, whilst the Press, for reasons which we still do not understand, were kept in the dark.

  The identification of the body caused no difficulty since it was that of Mme. Jave herself, believed by everybody to have been at Cannes.

  Apart from a contusion on the right temple, which could have been brought on by a fall, the corpse bears no mark of violence.

  Dr. Négrel claims not to have seen Mme. Jave either on Saturday or any other day since the departure of Dr. Jave and his wife, on July 1st, for Cannes.

  Josépha is reported to have made a similar statement.

  How was the young woman killed? When? We are fairly certain that the police doctor has placed the time of death sometime on Saturday.

  At noon on Monday, Dr. Jave, who had been notified by telephone, took the Paris plane from Nice.

  He spent the night, as did Dr. Négrel, at the Quai des Orfèvres. Nothing has transpired concerning the statements which the two men are supposed to have made.

  Even this morning Police Headquarters have refused to tell us whether either of the two men has been placed under arrest.

  Judge Coméliau has been authorized to conduct the preliminary examination and he is maintaining even stricter silence than Inspector Janvier.

  Our Cannes correspondent has attempted to get in touch with the nurse, Mlle. Jusserand, who is remaining there with the child, but it has been impossible for him to gain access to the villa, which has already been twice visited by the Flying Squad.

  This case is obviously one of the most mystifying of recent years, and dramatic developments must be expected.

  Who killed Mme. Jave? Why? And why was her completely naked body shut into a cupboard at the rear of her husband’s consulting-rooms?

  While waiting for the repercussions which will inevitably occur, we are in a position to provide a certain amount of information concerning the persons involved in this affair.

  Dr. Philippe Jave, born at Poitiers, is forty-four years of age, and after a brilliant career as a student at the École de Médecine de Paris, he was for a time a resident in various hospitals.

  Then, until his marriage, he settled at Issy-les-Moulineaux where his surgery was extremely modestly equipped and his patients consisted chiefly of workmen from the nearby factories.

  Five years ago he married Eveline Le Guérec, sixteen years younger than himself, so that she was twenty-eight at the time of her death.

  The Le Guérecs are the owners of a canning factory at Concarneau, and ‘Le Guérec et Laurent’ brand of sardines is well known to housewives.

  Immediately after their marriage the young couple moved to the Boulevard Haussmann, into a luxurious flat, and it was not long before Dr. Jave became one of the doctors most in demand in the capital.

  Two years later M. Le Guérec, senior, died, leaving the Concarneau business to his son, Yves, and to his daughter.

  The Javes have a baby daughter, Michèle, aged three.

  To move on to Dr. Négrel, he is also a brilliant young man. Aged thirty, he is unmarried and still occupies his student’s lodgings, in the Rue des Saints-Pères, where he lives modestly.

  He has no surgery of his own and works with Prof. Lebier. This is the first occasion on which he has agreed to act as a locum-tenens for one of his colleagues during the holidays.

  We have tried to ascertain whether the Javes and Dr. Négrel were on friendly terms before this arrangement was made, but the question remains undecided.

  Everywhere we have encountered an unusual degree of secrecy, at the Quai des Orfèvres, in the Boulevard Haussmann, and amongst the medical profession.

  The concierge has been no more forthcoming and merely affirms that she was not aware of Mme. Jave’s presence in the house.

  Our Côte d’Azur correspondent has despite this obtained one item of information, slight though it is. At NiceAirport a woman passenger answering to Mme. Jave’s description is said to have been seen taking the nine-fifteen plane on Saturday morning, which arrives at Orly at eleven-fifteen. The Airways company refuses to confirm whether or not her name appears on the passenger list.

  At the time of going to press, Dr. Paul is engaged on the post-mortem.

  When Maigret arrived back home, he carefully cut out the article and slipped it into a rough paper folder, just as he would do at Headquarters when he opened a file.

  Only, at the Quai des Orfèvres, his files would contain original, authentic documents, whereas here he had to be content with more or less fictitious articles from the papers.

  “Are you ready, Madame Maigret?”

  She emerged from the bedroom, in a light cotton dress, a little white hat on her head, and in white gloves, and as they made their way along the pavement, arm in arm, they really did look like a married couple on holiday.

  “You seem to be starting to enjoy yourself,” she commented, after a glance out of the corner of her eye.

  He made no reply but he was smiling, not thinking of poor Madame Jave, but picturing Janvier wrestling with the case which he must have set his heart on solving all on his own.

  * * *

  II

  « ^ »

  Calvados for everyone?” he asked, drawing his pipe from his pocket, as the waitress in the white apron arrived with the coffee.

  He knew the meaning of the look his wife gave him, the look which she then switched, more furtively, towards Pardon. He was not drunk, nor even mellow. He could hardly have had more to drink than the others, but he was conscious none the less of a certain sparkling of his eyes and a slackened manner of speech which were unusual for him.

  Twice during dinner Madame Maigret had watched him with a look of tenderness in her eyes, first when he had ordered friture de goujons, the second time when he had followed this by asking for an andouillette grillée with pommes frites.

  She had indeed recognized the restaurant in which they had not set foot for twenty years and where, in the old days, they had only been twice. The sign still said Chez le Père Jules. The wooden tables had been replaced by ones of some plastic material in violent colours and the bar inside had been modernized. The extraordinary thing was that Père Jules was still there and seemed to have grown no older, so that beneath his shock of white hair he seemed like a dummy figure in a wig.

  Though they had come to Joinville in the Pardons’ car it was Maigret who had chosen the restaurant, facing the Island of Love, around whic
h boats and canoes were gliding.

  There was a dance close by, and refrains from it were mingling with the music from the loud-speaker in the restaurant. The customers were not numerous and the majority had shed their coats, many were just neighbours who had called in.

  Now wasn’t Maigret being faithful to the programme he had mapped out for his holidays?

  “There are some things people are always talking about, even humming songs about, and yet never do,” he had declared at the beginning of the meal. “Things such as eating a friture in a bistro on the banks of the Marne. Tell me, Pardon, how many times have you come and eaten a friture on the bank of the Marne?”