Maigret Defends Himself Page 3

  Someone had been sent to Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Prieur’s residence on Boulevard de Courcelles to take down a statement from the young woman. That someone was probably an inspector. From which department had he been chosen?

  Master of Requests at the Council of State. Maigret had a vague memory of reading the words ‘Council of State’ above a monumental door on Place du Palais-Royal. It was a body that was very high up in the hierarchy of government, but, like most Frenchmen, he had only a vague idea of its remit.

  The Council of State, as far as he knew, ensured the constitutionality of laws and decrees and probably also decided on the admissibility of complaints by individuals and communities against the state.

  Master of Requests therefore meant that the person bearing this title had the task of presenting the complaints in question to the Council, having first examined the files, and giving a considered opinion.

  Statement of Mademoiselle Nicole Prieur, 18, student, living at 42, Boulevard de Courcelles with her uncle, Monsieur Jean-Baptiste Prieur, Master of Requests at the Council of State. Statement taken at 9.30 a.m. on 28 June.

  Boulevard de Courcelles: big apartment buildings facing the Parc Monceau, wide gates, chauffeurs polishing cars in the courtyards, concierges in uniform, just like the prefect’s clerk.

  On Monday evening, after having dinner with my uncle, I went to Boulevard Saint-Germain to see a friend, Martine Bouet, whose father is a doctor. I took the Métro, because my uncle needed the car.

  Maigret took notes. After dinner the previous evening, he had watched television with Madame Maigret, with nothing to indicate what awaited him not long afterwards.

  We spent most of the evening in Martine’s bedroom, listening to the new records she had got for her birthday. Martine is crazy about music. So am I, although not quite as much as her.

  How innocent and virginal it all was! Two girls in a bedroom, listening to … Listening to what? Bach? The latest pop songs? Jazz?

  I left her about 11.30, and my first idea was to go home by Métro. Once out on the boulevard, however, I felt like walking a little, because it was a cool night, and the day had been stifling.

  He tried to imagine her, in the sitting room of the apartment on Boulevard de Courcelles, dictating this statement with a self-important air. The sentences seemed straight out of a school essay. Had her uncle been present? Had there been moments when she had backtracked and corrected herself?

  After a while, I turned into Rue de Seine to get to the riverside, because I love walking by the river, especially at night. That was when I realized that I had left at Martine’s two records I had taken with me to play to her.

  My uncle is in the habit of going to bed early, because he gets up at the crack of dawn. I knew he had only gone out for about an hour. I was afraid that Martine would call the house to say that I had forgotten my records …

  It was possible. Anything is possible, Maigret knew that now, in a way he had never known it before. This part of the account, though, sounded less clear than the beginning.

  I found myself outside a little café, where the owner was sitting by the window, reading his newspaper. I remember clearly the words painted on the front: Désiré’s.

  An old-fashioned bistro, with a tin counter, five or six polished wooden tables and quite dim lighting! I went in …

  Maigret would soon be making his entrance, and he wondered how his character would be introduced. At that hour the previous night, he had been sleeping innocently in the bed he shared with Madame Maigret.

  I immediately asked for a telephone token, and the owner stood up reluctantly, as if he did not like being disturbed. I told him to serve me a coffee at any of the tables and went into the phone booth.

  Once I had Martine on the line, we chatted for a while. She wanted to know where I was. I told her that I was calling from a delightful old-fashioned bistro where there wasn’t a soul, not even a cat … Although actually, there was a cat, a big tabby, sitting on the owner’s lap … For a while, we discussed the possibility of her joining me, but then I told her I would not be there for long, that I wanted to walk another few hundred metres and then take the Métro.

  Maigret’s detective’s instincts were starting to come to the fore. She must definitely have phoned her friend, because that was a detail that could be checked. She had definitely been in a bistro called Désiré’s, because that was where Maigret had joined her soon afterwards. So there had been two phone calls, one to Martine, the other to Maigret.

  But she had only mentioned one telephone token. Maigret was eager to know if she was going to mention a second one.

  Our conversation lasted about ten minutes, perhaps a little more. We had only just said goodbye, of course, but two girls always find things to talk about. You think you have finished and then you launch into another subject …

  That meant that the first telephone call hadn’t been to Martine, but to Maigret, giving the latter time to get dressed, get in a taxi and reach Rue de Seine.

  Next, I sat down at the table where my coffee was waiting for me. The owner had resumed his place by the window, and the cat was back on his lap. There was an evening newspaper lying on a chair, and, as I had not read it, I started looking through it while waiting for my coffee to cool down.

  I have no idea how many minutes went by.

  Here, too, she would have had to take into account any possible testimony on the part of the bistro owner. At that moment, she must have been wondering if Maigret would come or not, after the yarn she had spun him on the phone. The timing, at any rate, was perfect.

  ‘Come in!’ Maigret called out.

  It was the waiter from the Brasserie Dauphine, bringing him a tray of sandwiches and two bottles of beer.

  ‘Put them down there.’

  He was neither hungry nor thirsty. Frowning, he went and closed the door, which the waiter had left ajar on his way out.

  One detail in any case was true: the cup of coffee. And when Maigret had got to Désiré’s, there was indeed a newspaper, half open on a chair near the girl.

  I did not have the feeling much time had passed, but I could not swear to it. My uncle often tells me off for having no notion of time … I was about to take my purse from my pocket. I was wearing a light suit with two pockets, so I had not taken my handbag with me. Another one of my faults: I am always leaving my handbag in different places. Which is why, as far as possible, I choose clothes with pockets.

  Clever. That settled the matter of the supposedly stolen handbag.

  It was then that a man came in, quite a tall man, with broad shoulders and a heavy face …

  Thanks for the description!

  I may be mistaken, but I have the impression that he had been looking at me through the window for a while. I vaguely remember seeing someone of the same build walking up and down the pavement.

  I thought at first that he was coming towards me, but he sat down at the next table, or rather he collapsed on to a chair and mopped his brow. I have no idea if he had been drinking, but it did occur to me.

  Careful! From here on, in particular, her statement had to coincide with what the owner of the bistro would say later.

  His face seemed familiar, although I could not put a name to it. Then I remembered that I had seen his photograph in the newspapers.

  He seemed to read my thoughts because he said:

  ‘You’re not mistaken. I really am Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’

  That was a mistake. Maigret would never have uttered a sentence like that. But the girl had had to give a plausible explanation of why they had immediately got into conversation.

  And Désiré, still sitting there on his chair, was an inconvenient witness.

  In reality, he hadn’t got up when Maigret came in, but had merely peered over the top of his newspaper. It was a moot point why he kept his bistro open. Perhaps out of habit? Or else to be alone and read his newspaper in peace instead of going to bed with his wife?

  I am not
the kind of girl who runs after stars and celebrities to get their autographs. Celebrities visit my uncle every week on Boulevard de Courcelles.

  All the same, I was pleased to see a policeman at close quarters, especially the one everyone is always talking about. I had imagined him to be bigger, especially fatter. What surprised me most, at first sight, was how merry he was, and I immediately wondered if he had been drinking.

  That again! And as a result, Maigret once again remembered the famous evening at the Pardons’, which was definitely taking on a ridiculous degree of importance in his mind. He was being accused of drinking! And now, too, he had drunk. Two cognacs. Big ones! The waiter in the café could testify to that. And there was beer on the tray. As if defiantly, he poured himself a glass, angrily grabbed a sandwich, bit into it and immediately put it back down.

  He wasn’t hungry. He was fuming, plunging ever further into an unknown world in which he was playing the main role without knowing exactly what that role was.

  In a nightmare, you are aware that everything is false. Even though you may believe in the reality of it for as long as you are asleep, waking up soon puts an end to the inconsistency.

  Here, it was reality that was inconsistent. He wasn’t asleep. He wasn’t dreaming. He had in front of him a statement that wasn’t some anonymous letter, or an account by a lunatic, but a perfectly official document given to him by the prefect of police in person.

  And the prefect of police believed it. Was Maigret going to end up believing it as well? He remembered what had preceded that scene in the bistro. The ringing of the telephone, then the young girl’s voice, the listening in the darkness, wondering if he should hang up, then Madame Maigret lighting the bedside lamp and asking:

  ‘What is it?’

  He had shrugged, still listening to the story being told in a faltering, supplicant voice.

  He had still been in a solid world then: at home, in a room he had occupied for more than twenty-five years. His wife was next to him, and she, too, was quite real.

  She handed him a pipe he hadn’t emptied before going to bed and lit a match. She knew that whenever he was dragged abruptly from his sleep, he liked to take a few puffs at his pipe to wake himself up.

  He had occupied this office for a long time, too. He had always thought it was real, and now it was already becoming less so. God alone knew what would happen when Maigret submitted his version of events to the prefect.

  What were the words used by this man who had been promising for two years to sweep Paris clean and who played tennis every morning at the Roland Garros Stadium, where he was happy to be photographed?

  Incidentally, he had been spiteful and unfair as far as Maigret’s fame was concerned. Maigret had never looked for fame. On the contrary. How many times had his investigations been complicated by the fact that he was recognized everywhere he went? Was it his fault the journalists had created a legend around him?

  Anyway, where was he? Oh, yes! The prefect had said something like:

  ‘So just because an unknown young woman tells you a touching if rather unlikely story, you get up in the middle of the night and rush to the bistro she’s indicated. Although you’re head of the Crime Squad, it never occurs to you to call the nearest police station and send an inspector to deal with the matter.’

  He wasn’t all that wrong. In fact, Madame Maigret had said much the same thing.

  ‘Why don’t you send an inspector?’

  Precisely because the matter wasn’t clear-cut, because there was something inconsistent about the story he had been told over the phone. Isn’t life often inconsistent? He’d had proof of that once again, except that this time he found himself at the centre of this inconsistency.

  One point to the prefect. But it wasn’t the prefect Maigret was angry with, not any more. He no longer had any desire to punch him in the face. He was only a pawn in this affair and he, too, now looked like a fool.

  He emptied his glass, filled another, which he put down within arm’s reach, and took the time to light a pipe before once more tackling the typewritten sheets.

  He ordered a white wine. The owner asked him:

  ‘A bottle?’

  He replied yes and he was brought a glass and a small bottle. He offered me some, but I told him I had just had coffee. I can’t remember how he brought up his proposal. Something like:

  ‘Most people have the wrong idea about our profession. You, too, I’d be willing to bet.

  ‘They talk mainly about your interrogations, the confessions you finally obtain by wearing the suspect down.

  ‘That’s the end result. What matters is the routine work. For example, this evening, I’m on the lookout for a dangerous criminal I’m almost sure to find in one of the local bars.’

  In spite of its pathos, the account she had given him over the phone, the story of her friend and the sinister Marco, held up rather better under close scrutiny than the words she had put in Maigret’s mouth.

  ‘You might enjoy coming with me.’

  He stood up, convinced I would accept. He threw some coins on the table and, when I tried to pay my bill, the owner told me it was already settled.

  I left at the same time as him.

  ‘Are your parents waiting for you?’

  ‘My uncle doesn’t care what time I get back. He trusts me.’

  ‘Then let’s go.’

  I yielded to my curiosity. I remember going along Rue Jacob, then down a little street whose name I have forgotten and into a bar where a lot of people were crowding around the counter.

  I looked especially at the faces around me, wondering if the criminal the inspector was looking for was one of the customers. He handed me a glass. It was whisky. I hesitated about drinking it, but I was thirsty, because I had let my coffee get cold and it had been bitter.

  I suspect my glass was refilled later without my being aware of it so that I had two drinks when I thought I was only having one. Everyone was standing shoulder to shoulder. It was hot, and the place was full of smoke.

  ‘Let’s go. The only people I’ve seen here are two unimportant pimps. The man I’m looking for is somewhere else.’

  ‘I’d rather go home.’

  ‘Give me another half-hour and I’m sure you’ll have the chance to witness a dramatic arrest that’ll be on the front pages of all the papers tomorrow.’

  For her story to hold up, he would have needed time to get her drunk. She also had to keep things fairly vague so that it would be impossible to locate the places she claimed she had been taken. The two stories, in other words, had to coincide, each as fake as the other, but nevertheless with the same basis in reality.

  The second place was in a cellar, where jazz was playing. People were dancing. I don’t know the cellars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, but I assume this was one of them. The inspector made me drink some more. I was no longer myself. I was unsteady on my legs and I thought another drink might buck me up.

  After that, it gets more and more blurred, with complete gaps in my memory. Out in the street, he held me by the arm then, on the pretext that I might fall, by the waist. I tried to push him away. He took me through a door and along a dimly lit corridor. He spoke to someone through a little window, an unshaven old man with white hair.

  I remember a narrow staircase, red carpeting, numbered rooms, the inspector turning a key.

  I kept repeating mechanically:

  ‘No! … No! … I don’t want to …’

  He just laughed. We were in a room, next to a bed.

  ‘Leave me alone! … Leave me alone, or I’ll call the—’

  I could swear he replied:

  ‘Don’t forget I am the police!’

  It was almost true. Not the last sentence, obviously. And the girl hadn’t struggled. Nor had Maigret led her from one bar to another, or given her anything to drink.

  What was true was that they’d met at Désiré’s and had exchanged various words. The girl, at that point, had indeed said her name was Nicole,
but she claimed that her surname was Carvet and that she was the daughter of a justice of the peace in La Rochelle. Her friend, the one who had been waiting for her at the station with Marco, was called Laure Dubuisson, and she was the daughter of a wholesale fish merchant in the same city.

  ‘If I understand correctly, you don’t know where your friend lives, or where you were taken or where you left your luggage. Last but not least, you’d be unable to recognize the building you ran away from, leaving your handbag containing your savings.’

  She was still drunk, and her breath smelled of alcohol.

  ‘The most important thing is to find you a bed for the night. Let’s go.’

  It was true that he had thrown some coins on the table. True, too, that once on Boulevard Saint-Germain, he had supported her by holding her arm, and that a little later, as she was swaying more, he had held her by the waist.

  He knew a decent, inexpensive hotel, the Hôtel de Savoie in Rue des Écoles. Despite what Nicole said, they hadn’t stopped on the way.

  ‘How did you write to your friend if you didn’t know her address?’

  In a thick voice, she had replied:

  ‘Do you think I’m lying, telling you stories? I wrote to her poste restante! Laure has always liked mysteries. When she was little, at school, she used to pretend …’

  He couldn’t remember what it was that Laure used to pretend. He was barely listening, in a hurry to get her off his hands.

  It was also true that the night porter at the Hôtel de Savoie was unshaven and white-haired, and that he had held out a key and muttered:

  ‘Second floor on the left.’

  There was no lift.

  ‘Help me to get upstairs. I can’t stand up straight.’

  He had helped her, and now it was hard for him to distinguish what was true from what was invented.

  ‘I can’t make it, Monsieur Maigret … I’m very drunk, aren’t I? … I feel so ashamed. I’ll never be able to go back to my parents now …’