Maigret and the Madwoman Page 2

  “Looking for anyone in particular?”

  He showed her his official card.

  “I’d be grateful for anything you could tell me about Madame Antoine de Caramé. That is her name, isn’t it, the old lady who lives on the second floor?”

  “I know, I know. Actually, Antoine was her second husband’s surname, so legally her name is Madame Antoine. But she’s very proud of her first husband, who was something quite high up in city government, so she likes to be known as Madame Antoine de Caramé.”

  “What do you make of her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is she at all peculiar?”

  “What I want to know is why the police are taking such an interest in her all of a sudden.”

  “She came asking for our help.”

  “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “Apparently things get moved around in her apartment while she’s out. Hasn’t she said anything to you?”

  “She just asked me if I’d seen any strangers going up there. I said I hadn’t. I wouldn’t anyway, not from here. I can’t see the front entrance or the staircase.”

  “Does she have many visitors?”

  “Only her niece, who comes once or twice a month. And even she sometimes doesn’t show up for three months at a stretch.”

  “Have you ever noticed anything odd about her behavior?”

  “She’s very much like any other old woman living by herself. She’s a real lady, you can see that, and she’s always very polite to everyone.”

  “Is she at home now?”

  “No. She never misses a chance of sunning herself on her favorite bench in the Tuileries.”

  “Does she talk to you at all?”

  “Just a few words when we happen to meet. Most of the time she inquires about my husband, who’s in the hospital.”

  “I’m much obliged to you.”

  “I take it you’d rather I didn’t mention your visit?”

  “It doesn’t matter one way or the other.”

  “At any rate, I don’t think she’s mad, if that’s what you’re getting at. She has her quirks—all old people do—but no more than anyone else.”

  “You may be seeing me again.”

  Maigret was in high spirits. For ten days there hadn’t been a drop of rain, the pale blue sky was cloudless, and a gentle breeze was blowing. In this perfect spring weather, Paris was as gay and colorful as a backdrop in an operetta.

  He stayed rather late in his office to check through a report, which he had been working on for some time and was anxious to get rid of. He could hear the passing traffic, cars and buses, and occasionally a tug on the river sounding its horn.

  It was nearly seven when he opened the door to the inspectors’ room to tell Lucas and the two or three other inspectors on night duty that he was leaving.

  He went downstairs, toying with the idea of dropping in at the Brasserie Dauphine for an apéritif. As he went out through the main gate, he exchanged greetings with the two officers on guard.

  After a moment or two of hesitation, he decided that he would rather go straight home. He had gone a few yards in the direction of the Boulevard du Palais when the tiny figure of a woman stepped into his path. He had no difficulty in recognizing her from Lapointe’s description.

  “It really is you, isn’t it?” she said with great fervor.

  She saw no need to address him by name. Whom could she mean but the great, the famous Chief Superintendent, every detail of whose cases she had read avidly in the newspapers? She even went so far as to paste into scrapbooks every word that was written about him.

  “Please forgive me for stopping you in the street like this, but in there they wouldn’t let me near you.”

  Maigret felt a little foolish. He could just imagine the two policemen exchanging amused glances behind his back.

  “Mind you, I can see their point. I don’t hold it against them. After all, it’s their job to see that you’re not disturbed when you’re busy, isn’t it?”

  It was her eyes that made the deepest impression on the Chief Superintendent: clear, light-gray eyes, very gentle and yet full of sparkle. She smiled at him. Clearly, she was in seventh heaven. But there was something else about her, an intense vitality, quite extraordinary in such a tiny woman.

  “Which way are you going?”

  He pointed toward the Pont Saint-Michel.

  “Would you mind very much if I walked with you?”

  Trotting along at his side, she seemed even tinier.

  “The main thing is, do you see, that you should realize I’m not mad. I know how we old people look to the young, and I am a very old woman indeed.”

  “You’re eighty-six, aren’t you?”

  “I see that the young man I spoke to has told you all about me. He seems very young for the job, but you can see he’s been well brought up. He has beautiful manners.”

  “Have you been waiting here long?”

  “Since five or six. I thought you left your office at six. I saw a great many gentlemen come out, but you weren’t among them.”

  So she had stood there waiting a whole hour, ignored by the two indifferent policemen on guard duty.

  “I have this feeling that I’m in danger. Someone is sneaking into my apartment and rummaging through my things. There must be some reason for it.”

  “You say someone has been searching your apartment. How do you know?”

  “Because I find things not quite as I left them. I’m extremely tidy. It’s almost an obsession. In my apartment, there’s a place for everything, and for more than forty years everything has been in its place.”

  “And this has happened more than once?”

  “At least four times.”

  “Do you have anything valuable?”

  “No, Chief Superintendent. Nothing but the sorts of odds and ends that one accumulates over the years and keeps for reasons of sentiment.”

  She stopped suddenly and looked back over her shoulder.

  “Is anyone following you now?” he asked.

  “Not at this moment, no. I beg you to come and see me. You’ll understand it all much better when I’ve shown you the place.”

  “I’ll do my best to try to fit it in.”

  “For an old woman like me, can’t you do better than that? The Quai de la Mégisserie is just around the corner from here. Drop in to see me sometime in the next day or so. I promise I won’t keep you. And I promise I won’t bother you at your office again.”

  She was nothing if not artful.

  “I’ll come as soon as I can.”

  “This week?”

  “This week, if possible. Otherwise, early next week.”

  They had arrived at his bus stop.

  “Please forgive me. I must be on my way home now.”

  “I’m relying on you. I trust you.”

  At that moment, he would have found it hard to say what he really felt about her. There was no denying that she might have made the whole thing up. That, at any rate, was what it sounded like. But when one was actually with her, looking into her face, it was almost impossible not to take her seriously.

  He arrived home to find the table already set for dinner. Kissing his wife on both cheeks, he said:

  “It’s been such a lovely day. I hope you managed to get out.”

  “I did some shopping.”

  And then he said something that surprised her.

  “Tell me, have you ever sat on a bench in a public park?”

  She was taken aback by the question. After a moment’s reflection she said:

  “I suppose I must have, when I was too early for a dental appointment, for instance.”

  “I had a visitor this evening who spends almost every afternoon sitting on a bench in the Tuileries.”

  “There are lots of people like that.”

  “Have you ever talked with any of them?”

  “On one occasion, at least. The mother of a little girl asked me to keep an eye on her while she got something from a shop just across the square.”

  Here, too, a window was open. They had several kinds of cold cuts and a salad with mayonnaise. It might have been the height of summer.

  “How about a short walk?”

  There was still a rosy glow in the sky from the setting sun, and it was quiet on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. Here and there they could see people looking down into the street, their elbows resting on the window sills.

  They enjoyed walking for its own sake. It was pleasant to be together, though they had nothing much to say to one another. Together they watched the people crossing the streets, together they looked at the window displays in the shops, and occasionally one or the other would make a remark. They went as far as the Bastille and came back along the Boulevard Beaumarchais.

  “A very strange old lady came to see me this evening, though actually it was Lapointe who interviewed her. I didn’t see her until later, when she stopped me in the street as I was leaving.

  “From the story she tells you’d think she was mad, or at least a bit touched.”

  “What’s her trouble?”

  “Nothing, really. It’s just that she says that sometimes, when she’s been out, she comes back to find some of her things slightly out of place.”

  “Does she have a cat?”

  “That was the first thing Lapointe asked her. She doesn’t have any pets. She lives above a shop that sells birds, and she can hear them singing all day long, which she says is company enough for her.”

  “Do you think there’s any truth in it?”

  “When she was actually there, looking up at me, yes, I did. She’s got wonderfully clear gray eyes, full of kindliness and honesty, utterly without guile, at any rate. She’s been widowed twelve years. She lives alone. Except for a niece whom she hardly ever sees, she has no one in the world.

  “Every morning she goes out to the local shops, in a white hat and gloves. She spends most of her afternoons sitting on a bench in the Tuileries. She doesn’t complain, she’s never bored, and loneliness doesn’t seem to worry her.”

  “That’s true of a lot of old people, you know.”

  “I guess you’re right, but there’s something a little different about her, though I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

  It was dark by the time they got home, and much cooler. They went to bed early, and next morning, since it was another lovely day, Maigret decided to walk to work.

  As usual, there was a formidable pile of letters for him. He just had time to glance through them and have à word with his inspectors before the Director’s daily briefing. There was nothing very important on hand.

  He spent the morning clearing up a few routine matters and then decided, on the spur of the moment, to have lunch at the Brasserie Dauphine. He called his wife to tell her he would not be home for lunch. He had intended, after he had eaten, to call on the old lady at the Quai de la Mégisserie and was prevented from doing so only by the merest chance. He ran into an old colleague, whom he had not seen since his retirement, and they lingered for a quarter of an hour or more, chatting in the sunshine.

  Twice that afternoon he thought again of going to see the old lady, whom the inspectors had already nicknamed “Maigret’s old madwoman,” but each time, he found some excuse for putting it off, telling himself that tomorrow would do just as well.

  If the newspapers were ever to get hold of the tale of the wandering ornaments, he would be the laughingstock of Paris.

  That evening they stayed in and watched television. Next morning he overslept and had to go to work by bus. A few minutes before noon, the Divisional Superintendent of the 1st Arrondissement called him.

  “Something has happened here that I think may be of interest to your people. The concierge of the apartment house tells me that one of your inspectors, a young fellow, very handsome, called to see her the other day.”

  He had a sudden foreboding.

  “At the Quai de la Mégisserie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you calling from the apartment?”

  “I’m downstairs in the bird shop. There’s no telephone up there.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  He put his head around the door of the inspectors’ duty room and said to Lapointe:

  “Come with me.”

  “Anything wrong, Chief?”

  “As far as you and I are concerned, yes, very wrong. It’s the old lady.”

  “The one with the gray eyes and the white hat?”

  “Yes. She’s dead.”

  “Murdered?”

  “I presume so. Why else would the Superintendent have thought fit to get in touch with me?”

  They didn’t bother with a car. It was quicker to walk. Superintendent Jenton, well known to Maigret, was standing on the edge of the sidewalk, next to a parrot chained to its perch.

  “Did you know her?”

  “I saw her only once. I’d promised to come to see her as soon as I could. Yesterday, I nearly did.”

  Would it have made any difference if he had?

  “Is there anyone up there?”

  “One of my men, and Doctor Forniaux has just arrived.”

  “How did she die?”

  “I don’t know yet. At about half past ten this morning, one of the fourth-floor tenants noticed that her door was ajar. She didn’t think anything of it and went out to do her shopping. When she got back at eleven and saw it was still open, she called out:

  “ ‘Madame Antoine!… Madame Antoine!… Are you there?’

  “When there was no answer, she went into the apartment and nearly tripped over the body.”

  “Was it on the floor?”

  “Yes. In the living room. The neighbor had the good sense to call us at once.”

  Maigret went slowly up the stairs. His expression was grim.

  “How was she dressed?”

  “She must have been out earlier. She was still wearing her white hat and gloves.”

  “Any visible injuries?”

  “None that I could see. The concierge told me that one of your men was here two days ago, asking questions about the old lady, so, of course, I called you at once.”

  Doctor Forniaux, who was kneeling on the floor, stood up as the three men came into the room.

  They shook hands.

  “Can you tell us the cause of death?”

  “Suffocation.”

  “Do you mean she was strangled?”

  “No. Some sort of cloth—a towel, perhaps, or even a handkerchief—was held over her nose and mouth until she stopped breathing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll be able to tell you for certain after the autopsy.”

  The window was wide open, and they could hear the birds twittering in the shop below.

  “When did she die?”

  “Sometime yesterday. Late afternoon or early evening.”

  In death, the old woman seemed even tinier than she had when she was alive. Lying there, so small, with one leg bent at an awkward angle, she looked like a disjointed puppet.

  The doctor had closed her eyes. Her face and hands seemed carved in ivory.

  “How long before the killer could be sure she was dead, would you say?”

  “It’s hard to tell, especially with a woman of her age. Five minutes perhaps, a little more, a little less…”

  “Lapointe, call up Public Prosecutions and the Laboratory. Tell Moers to send his men right away.”

  “Unless there’s something else I can do for you,” said the Police Doctor, “I’ll be on my way. I’ll arrange for the hearse to take her to the Forensic Laboratory as soon as you’ve finished with her.”

  A small crowd was beginning to gather outside the building. The Divisional Superintendent sent his man down to speak to them.

  “Get them moving. This isn’t a public entertainment.”

  Murder was scarcely a new experience for either of them, but they were nonetheless deeply affected. She was so very old and—what made it seem worse—there was not even a mark on her.

  Then there was the atmosphere of the place, recalling the Edwardian, if not the Victorian, era. The furniture was of solid mahogany, massive pieces, all beautifully polished to a high gloss. The chairs, of the kind still to be found in country drawing rooms, were covered in crimson plush. There were a great many knickknacks and masses of photographs hanging on every wall, against a background of flowered paper.

  “All we can do now is wait for the Deputy Public Prosecutor.”

  “He won’t be long. They’ll send the first available one. He’ll arrive with his clerk, take a quick look around, and that will be that.”

  This, indeed, was a fair description of what usually happened as a prelude to the arrival of the Forensic technicians, with all their cumbersome apparatus.

  The door swung open without a sound. Maigret gave a start. A little girl sidled in, probably a neighbor’s child, curious to see what all the comings and goings were about.

  “Do you come here often?”

  “No, I’ve never been here before.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Just across the landing.”

  “Did you know Madame Antoine?”

  “I used to see her sometimes on the stairs.”

  “Did she ever talk to you?”

  “She always smiled at me.”

  “Did she ever give you anything, candy or chocolates?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  “Take me to her, will you?”

  He turned to the Superintendent.

  “Excuse me for a moment. I’d be grateful if you’d let me know when the Deputy gets here.”

  It was an old building. The walls were bulging in places, and there were gaps between the floorboards.

  “There’s a man to see you, Mommy.”

  The woman came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. Her arms, just below the elbow, were still spattered with soapsuds.

  “I’m Chief Superintendent Maigret. I just happened to be in the apartment across the landing when your daughter walked in. Was it you who found the body?”

  “What body? Go to your room, Lucette.”

  “Your neighbor, opposite.”

  “So she’s dead? I always said it was bound to happen sooner or later. A woman of her age shouldn’t live alone. No doubt she was taken bad, and didn’t have the strength to call for help.”