Maigret and the Minister Read online

  ‘You mean the president of the Council?’

  Point looked at Maigret, aghast. The present government leader, Oscar Malterre, was a man of sixty-five who had been a member of nearly every cabinet since his forties. His father had been a prefect, one of his brothers was a deputy and another a colonial governor.

  ‘I hope you’re not implying …’

  ‘I’m not implying anything, minister. I am trying to piece together the facts. The Calame Report was in this study yesterday evening. This afternoon, it was gone. Are you certain that the door of the apartment hadn’t been forced?’

  ‘You can see for yourself. There are no scratch marks on the wood or on the brass of the lock. Perhaps someone used a skeleton key?’

  ‘What about the lock on your study?’

  ‘Look. It’s very easy. There have been times when I’ve forgotten my key and I’ve unlocked it with a piece of wire.’

  ‘I will, if I may, carry on asking the routine police questions, if only to do the groundwork. Who, apart from you, has a key to the apartment?’

  ‘My wife, of course.’

  ‘You told me she knows nothing about the Calame affair.’

  ‘I haven’t mentioned it to her. She doesn’t even know that I came here yesterday and today.’

  ‘Does she take a close interest in politics?’

  ‘She reads the newspapers, keeps herself sufficiently informed to be able to discuss my work with me. When I was invited to stand for election to parliament, she tried to dissuade me. She didn’t want me to be a minister either. She’s not ambitious.’

  ‘Is she from La Roche-sur-Yon?’

  ‘Her father was a lawyer there.’

  ‘Let’s go back to the keys. Who else has a set?’

  ‘My secretary, Mademoiselle Blanche.’

  ‘Blanche who?’

  Maigret scribbled in his black notebook.

  ‘Blanche Lamotte. She must be … wait … forty-one … no, forty-two.’

  ‘Have you known her for a long time?’

  ‘She started working for me as a typist when she was barely seventeen and had just finished at the Pigier secretarial college. She’s been with me ever since.’

  ‘And she is also from La Roche?’

  ‘From a neighbouring village. Her father was a butcher.’

  ‘Pretty?’

  Point seemed to be thinking, as if he’d never asked himself the question.

  ‘No. You couldn’t say she was pretty.’

  ‘In love with you?’

  Maigret smiled on seeing the minister blush.

  ‘How do you know? Let’s say she’s in love in her own way. I don’t think there’s ever been a man in her life.’

  ‘Jealous of your wife?’

  ‘Not in the usual sense of the word. I suspect her of being jealous of what she considers to be her territory.’

  ‘You mean that at the office, she’s the one who looks after you.’

  Point, even though he was a man of the world, looked surprised that Maigret had put his finger on such ordinary truths.

  ‘She was in your office, you told me, when Piquemal was announced and you asked her to leave. When you called her back in, were you still holding the report?’

  ‘I think so, yes … but I assure you …’

  ‘Please understand, minister, that I am not accusing anyone, that I do not suspect anyone. Like you, I’m trying to get a clear picture. Are there any other keys to this apartment?’

  ‘My daughter has one.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Anne-Marie? Twenty-four.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘She’s going – or rather was going – to be married next month. With this storm brewing, I don’t know any more. Do you know the Courmont family?’

  ‘By name.’

  If the Malterres were renowned politicians, the Courmonts had been equally illustrious as diplomats for at least three generations. Robert Courmont, who had a mansion in Rue de la Faisanderie and was one of the last Frenchmen to wear a monocle, had been an ambassador for more than thirty years, in Tokyo and London, and was a member of the Institut de France.

  ‘The son?’

  ‘Alain Courmont, yes. At the age of thirty-two he’s already served as attaché at three or four embassies and is now head of an important department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He’s been appointed to Buenos Aires, where he must take up his post three weeks after his wedding. You see now that the situation is even more disastrous than it seems. A scandal like the one that awaits me tomorrow or the day after …’

  ‘Did your daughter often come here?’

  ‘Not since we have officially lived at the ministry residence.’

  ‘So she never has?’

  ‘I prefer to tell you everything, inspector. Otherwise there would have been no point in asking you to come. Anne-Marie took her baccalaureate and then studied philosophy and arts. She’s not a blue-stocking, but she’s not a girl like the girls of today. Once, about a month ago, I found some cigarette ash here. Mademoiselle Blanche doesn’t smoke. Neither does my wife. I asked Anne-Marie and she admitted that she sometimes came to the apartment with Alain. I didn’t want to ask any more. I remember what she said, looking me straight in the eye without blushing:

  ‘ “You have to be realistic, Father. I’m twenty-four and he’s thirty-two.”

  ‘Do you have children, Maigret?’

  Maigret shook his head.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any cigarette ash today?’

  ‘No.’

  Since he had had nothing to do but answer questions, Point was already less despondent, like a patient who answers a doctor knowing that the latter will eventually give him a remedy. Perhaps Maigret was dwelling on this business with the keys deliberately?

  ‘There’s no one else?’

  ‘My principal private secretary.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Jacques Fleury.’

  ‘Have you known him long?’

  ‘I was at school and then at university with him.’

  ‘Also from Vendée?’

  ‘No. He’s from Niort. Not so far away. Around my age.’

  ‘Lawyer?’

  ‘He was never called to the bar.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s a strange fellow. His parents had money. As a young man, he had no desire to work regularly. Every six months, he’d embrace some new fad. He once took it into his head to supply fishing vessels, and he owned several boats. He also got involved with a colonial company that went under. I lost track of him. After I was elected deputy, I would run into him from time to time in Paris.’

  ‘Ruined?’

  ‘Completely. But he always looked dapper. He’s never stopped looking dapper, or being infinitely agreeable. He’s the incarnation of the charming failure.’

  ‘Did he ask you for favours?’

  ‘Yes and no. It’s of no importance. Shortly before becoming a minister, chance had it that I bumped into him more frequently, and when I needed a principal private secretary, he happened to be on hand and available.’

  Point knitted his bushy eyebrows.

  ‘On that matter, I have to explain something to you. You probably don’t realize what it means to become a minister overnight. Look at me. I’m a lawyer, just a provincial lawyer, it’s true, but still I do know about the law. However, I’m put in charge of public works. With no training, I am suddenly at the head of a ministry teeming with competent senior civil servants and people as distinguished as the late Calame. I did as everyone else did. I put on a confident air and acted as if I knew everything. Even so, I sensed mockery and hostility around me. I was also aware of a host of intrigues about which I was clueless.

  ‘It’s the same within the ministry. I’m still an outsider because there too I find myself among people in the know about all that goes on behind the scenes in politics.

  ‘Having a man like Fleury by my side, in front of whom I can open
up …’

  ‘I understand. When you appointed him as your principal private secretary, did Fleury already have political connections?’

  ‘Only vague contacts made in bars and restaurants.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘He was. He must still be, because I don’t think he got divorced, and he had two children by his wife. They don’t live together. He has at least one other household in Paris, possibly two, because he has a talent for complicating his life.’

  ‘Are you certain he was unaware that you had the Calame Report in your possession?’

  ‘He didn’t even see Piquemal at the ministry. I didn’t mention anything to him.’

  ‘How are relations between Fleury and Mademoiselle Blanche?’

  ‘Outwardly cordial. Deep down, Mademoiselle Blanche can’t stand him because she’s bourgeois through and through and Fleury’s love life offends and exasperates her. You see, this is getting us nowhere.’

  ‘Are you certain your wife has no idea you are here?’

  ‘She commented this evening that I seemed worried. She wanted me to take advantage of the fact that for once I didn’t have an important engagement and go to bed. I said I had a meeting.’

  ‘Did she believe you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you in the habit of lying to her?’

  ‘No.’

  It was almost midnight. This time it was the minister who refilled their little tumblers and went over with a sigh to the rack to choose a curved pipe with a silver ring.

  As if to confirm Maigret’s intuition, the telephone rang. Point looked at him as if to ask whether he should answer it.

  ‘It’s probably your wife. When you go home, you’ll have to tell her everything.’

  The minister picked up the receiver.

  ‘Hello! Yes … It’s me …’

  He already sounded guilty.

  ‘No … There’s someone with me … We had to discuss a very important matter … I’ll tell you about it later … I don’t know … I won’t be much longer … Fine … I assure you I feel fine … What? … From the president’s office? … He wants …? Right … I’ll see … Yes … I’ll do so right away … See you later …’

  Beads of sweat on his forehead, again he looked at Maigret like a man at his wits’ end.

  ‘The president’s office called three times … The president sent a message that I should telephone him no matter how late …’

  He mopped his brow. He had forgotten to light his pipe.

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Call him, I suppose. Tomorrow morning you’re going to have to tell him that you no longer have the report. There’s no chance we’ll be able to lay our hands on it overnight.’

  There was something comical about Point’s helplessness, which showed both his consternation and the instinctive trust that some people have in the power of the police. He said, almost mechanically:

  ‘You think not?’

  Then, sitting down heavily, he dialled a number he knew by heart.

  ‘Hello! The minister of public works here … I’d like to speak to the president … My apologies, madame … This is Point speaking … I think your husband is expecting … Yes … I’ll hold on …’

  He drained his glass in one go, his gaze fixed on one of the buttons on Maigret’s jacket.

  ‘Yes, sir … I apologize for not having called you earlier … I’m better, yes … It was nothing … Fatigue, probably, yes … And also … I was going to tell you …’

  Maigret heard a booming voice that did not sound reassuring. Point was like a child being scolded who is trying to excuse himself to no avail.

  ‘Yes … I know … Believe me …’

  At last he was allowed to speak, and he stumbled over his words.

  ‘You see, the most … the most dreadful thing has happened … Sorry? … It’s about the report, yes … I brought it to my private apartment yesterday … Boulevard Pasteur, yes …’

  If only he could tell the story his way! But the president kept interrupting him, and he became confused.

  ‘Yes of course … I’m in the habit of working here when … What? … I’m here at the moment, yes … No, my secretary didn’t know, otherwise she would have given me your message … No! I don’t have the Calame Report any more … That is what I have been trying to tell you from the start … I left it here in the belief that it would be safer than at the ministry and, when I came back to pick it up, this afternoon, after our conversation …’

  Maigret looked away on seeing a tear of frustration or humiliation well up under his large eyelids.

  ‘I spent a long time looking … No! Of course I haven’t …’

  Covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he whispered to Maigret:

  ‘He’s asking if I’ve informed the police …’

  Now he listened, muttering occasionally:

  ‘Yes … yes … I understand …’

  His face was streaming and Maigret was tempted to go and open the window.

  ‘I assure you, sir …’

  The ceiling light was not on. The two men and the corner of the study were lit only by a lamp with a green shade which left the rest of the room in darkness. From time to time, a taxi could be heard tooting its horn in the fog on Boulevard Pasteur and, very occasionally, the whistle of a train resounded.

  The photograph of the father on the wall portrayed a man of around sixty-five and must have been taken around ten years earlier, judging by Point’s age. The photograph of the mother, on the other hand, showed a woman of barely thirty, in a dress and with a hairstyle from the turn of the century, and Maigret deduced that Madame Point, like his own mother, had died when her son was still very young.

  There were possibilities he hadn’t yet mentioned to the minister and which he was subconsciously beginning to play out in his mind. Because of the telephone call he had overheard, he thought of Malterre, the president of the Council, who was also minister of the interior and who, consequently, had the supreme authority over the Sûreté Nationale.

  Supposing Malterre had got wind of Piquemal’s visit to Boulevard Saint-Germain and put Auguste Point under surveillance … or even that after the conversation he was having with him …

  Anything was possible – Point could have wanted to hold on to the document in order to destroy it, or keep it as a trump card.

  The tabloid term happened in this case to be exact: the Calame Report was a real bombshell, which gave whoever had it in their possession boundless opportunities.

  ‘Yes, sir … Not the police, I repeat …’

  The president must have been harassing him with questions that threw him off balance. His eyes were imploring Maigret for help, but there was nothing he could do. Point was already wavering.

  ‘The person who is in my study is not here on official business …’

  Yet he was a strong man, both physically and mentally. Maigret also considered himself to be strong, and yet, in the past, he too had wavered when he had been caught up in a chain of events, albeit less dramatic ones. What had crushed him the most, he remembered and would do for the rest of his life, was the feeling of being confronted with a nameless, faceless power, impossible to pin down, and also the fact that that power was the Force – with a capital ‘F’ – of the Law.

  Point caved in.

  ‘It’s Detective Chief Inspector Maigret. I asked him to come and see me in a private capacity … I am sure that he …’

  The president interrupted him. The receiver shook.

  ‘No leads, no … Nobody … No, my wife doesn’t know either … Nor does my secretary … I swear …’

  Becoming humble, he forgot his habitual ‘sir’.

  ‘Yes … Nine o’clock … I promise … Do you wish to speak to him? One moment …’

  He looked at Maigret sheepishly.

  ‘The president wishes …’

  Maigret grabbed the phone.

  ‘Maigret here, sir.’

  ‘I
understand that my colleague from public works has informed you of the incident?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘No need to repeat that this business must remain strictly confidential. So it is not a matter of carrying out a routine investigation. The Sûreté Nationale won’t be brought in either.’

  ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘It goes without saying that if, in a private capacity, without acting officially, without appearing to be involved, you were to discover anything related to the Calame Report, you would let me …’

  He corrected himself. He did not want to be personally mixed up with the case.

  ‘… you would inform my colleague Point.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That is all.’

  Maigret wanted to hand the receiver back to the minister, but the president had hung up.

  ‘I’m sorry, Maigret. He pushed me into naming you. He’s said to have been a famous criminal lawyer before going into politics, and I have no trouble believing it. I apologize for having put you in a delicate—’

  ‘You’re seeing him tomorrow morning?’

  ‘At nine. He doesn’t want the other members of the cabinet to know about this. The thing he’s most worried about is that Piquemal will talk, or already has done, because he is the only person, other than the three of us, who knows that the document has surfaced.’

  ‘I’ll try to find out what kind of man he is.’

  ‘You won’t give yourself away, will you?’

  ‘I must simply warn you, in all honesty, that I have to inform my chief. I don’t need to go into detail, i.e. mention the Calame Report. All the same, he must be told that I am working for you. If it were only up to me, I could handle the case in my own time, but I’ll probably need the help of some of my squad …’

  ‘Will they know?’

  ‘They won’t know anything of the report, I promise you.’

  ‘I was on the verge of offering him my resignation, but he pre-empted me by saying that he didn’t even have the option of firing me from the cabinet because even if the truth didn’t come out, doing that would arouse the suspicions of those who have been following the latest political developments. Now I’m the black sheep and my colleagues—’

  ‘Are you certain that the report you had in your hands was a genuine copy of the Calame Report?’