Maigret's Patience Page 3

  ‘Is it true that you don’t suspect me, and all this is just routine?’

  ‘I am more or less certain that you didn’t kill Manuel.’

  ‘Then what do you suspect me of?’

  ‘You know that better than I, my dear. I’m in no hurry. It will come out in due course.’

  He called Janvier and the two inspectors, who were looking ill at ease in this yellow and white bedroom.

  ‘Over to you, boys.’

  As if getting ready for a fight, Aline lit a cigarette and puffed out the smoke with an expression of disdain.

  2.

  When he had left home, Maigret wasn’t expecting to go back to Rue des Acacias, where he had spent so many anxious hours a week earlier. He was just setting out on another radiant day just like a few million other Parisians. He was expecting even less to be sitting with Examining Magistrate Ancelin around one o’clock in the afternoon in a bistro called Chez l’Auvergnat. It was across the road from Palmari’s building and was an old-fashioned bar with a traditional zinc counter top, aperitifs that no one but old people drank any more and a landlord in a blue apron, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up and a resplendent black moustache.

  There were sausages, salamis, cheeses shaped like gourds, hams with greyish rinds as if they had been kept in ash, all hanging from the ceiling, and in the front window there were enormous flat loaves of bread from the Massif Central.

  Through the glazed door to the kitchen, the landlady could be seen working at her stove, thin and gaunt.

  ‘Is it for lunch? A table for two?’

  There was no tablecloth, but just some embossed paper on top of oilcloths on which the landlord added up the bills. The menu was chalked on a board:

  Rillettes du Morvan

  Rouelle de veau aux lentilles

  Fromage

  Tarte maison

  The chubby magistrate lit up in this ambience, hungrily inhaling the thick aroma of cooking. There were no more than two or three silent customers, regulars whom the landlord knew by name.

  For months this had been the headquarters of the inspectors who took it in turn to keep an eye on Manuel Palmari and Aline, one of them on standby to follow the young woman when she left the building.

  For the time being, their work seemed to be at an end.

  ‘What’s your opinion, Maigret? Mind if I call you that, even though we’ve only just met? Though, as I said earlier, I have been looking forward to meeting you for a long time. Do you know that I find you fascinating?’

  Maigret merely muttered:

  ‘Do you like veal?’

  ‘I like all country dishes. I too am the son of peasants. My older brother runs the family farm.’

  Half an hour earlier, when Maigret had emerged from Aline’s room, he had been surprised to find the magistrate waiting for him in Palmari’s little room.

  By then Moers had made his preliminary report to Maigret. The paraffin test had been negative. In other words, it wasn’t Aline who had pulled the trigger.

  ‘There were no fingerprints on the gun, which was carefully wiped, or on the door handles, including the front door to the apartment.’

  Maigret frowned.

  ‘You mean that the handle didn’t even have Aline’s fingerprints?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  She chipped in:

  ‘I always put gloves on when I go out, even in summer, as I hate having damp hands.’

  ‘Which gloves did you wear this morning when you went out for your walk?’

  ‘Some white cotton gloves. Here! These ones.’

  She took them out of a handbag shaped like a holdall. Some green marks showed that she had been handling vegetables.

  ‘Baron!’ Maigret called.

  ‘Yes, chief?’

  ‘Was it you who followed Aline this morning?’

  ‘Yes. She left a little before nine o’clock and she was carrying a red string shopping bag as well as the handbag over there on the table.’

  ‘Was she wearing gloves?’

  ‘White gloves, as usual.’

  ‘You didn’t let her out of your sight?’

  ‘I didn’t go inside the shops, but I never lost her from view.’

  ‘Did she make any telephone calls?’

  ‘No. At the butcher’s she queued up for quite a while but didn’t talk to any of the other women who were waiting.’

  ‘Did you note what time she got back?’

  ‘To the minute. Nine fifty-four.’

  ‘Did she seem to be in a hurry?’

  ‘Quite the opposite. She gave me the impression she was dawdling and smiling, like someone enjoying the nice weather. It was already hot, and I noticed sweat marks under her arms.’

  Maigret was sweating too and could feel his shirt getting damp, even though his jacket was quite light.

  ‘Call Vacher. Good. Tell me, Vacher, while your colleague was following Aline Bauche, did you stay at your post outside the building? Where were you standing?’

  ‘In front of the dentist’s house, just opposite, except for a five-minute break when I had a glass of white wine at the Auvergnat’s. You can see the front door of the building very well from the bar.’

  ‘Do you know who went in and out?’

  ‘First I saw the concierge, who came to shake out a rug on the doorstep. She spotted me and muttered something or other, because she doesn’t like us watching the building and takes it as a personal insult.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Around nine ten a young woman left with a portfolio under her arm. It was Mademoiselle Lavancher; her family lives on the first floor on the right. Her father works as an inspector on the Métro. She goes every morning to an art school on Boulevard des Batignolles.’

  ‘And afterwards? Did anyone go in?’

  ‘The butcher’s boy delivered some meat, I don’t know to whom. I’m familiar with him because I always see him at the butcher’s up the road.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘The Italian woman on the third floor beat her carpets out of the window. Then, a few minutes before ten, Aline returned with a load of shopping, and Baron came back and joined me. We were surprised when the local chief inspector turned up later, then the examining magistrate, then yourself. We didn’t know what to do. We thought that, awaiting further instructions, we’d better stay in the street.’

  ‘By early afternoon I’d like a complete list, floor by floor, of all the tenants in the building, with details of their families, professions, habits, etc. Get on to it, the pair of you.’

  ‘Should we question them?’

  ‘I’ll handle that myself.’

  Manuel’s body had been taken away, and the pathologist was no doubt beginning the post-mortem.

  ‘Aline, I have to ask you not to leave the apartment. Inspector Janvier will stay with you. Have your men gone, Moers?’

  ‘They’ve finished their work here. We’ll have the photos and an enlargement of fingerprints by about three o’clock.’

  ‘So there were some fingerprints after all?’

  ‘All over the place, as usual: on the ashtrays, for example, on the radio, the TV, the records and any number of objects that the murderer probably didn’t touch and so didn’t think it necessary to wipe.’

  Maigret frowned, and that is when he noticed that Ancelin was scrutinizing his every change of expression.

  ‘Do you want me to send out for some sandwiches, boys?’

  ‘No, we’ll go and have lunch after you.’

  On the landing, the magistrate asked:

  ‘Are you going home for lunch?’

  ‘Unfortunately no, even though there’s a lobster waiting for me.’

  ‘Would you like to join me?’

  ‘You don’t know the neighbourhood as well as I do. Allow me to invite you, if you don’t mind eating Auvergnat food in a bistro.’

  And so they ended up at this table with the paper tablecloth, Maigret occasionally taking out his handkerchief to mop his
brow.

  ‘I presume that you consider the paraffin test conclusive, Maigret? I did once study scientific methods of investigation, but I confess I don’t remember a lot about it.’

  ‘Unless the murderer was wearing rubber gloves, there will certainly be minuscule traces of powder on their hands which will last two or three days and which the paraffin test will reveal without fail.’

  ‘Don’t you think that, given that the cleaner only comes for a few hours a day, Aline might wear rubber gloves, if only to do the washing-up?’

  ‘It’s likely. We’ll soon find out.’

  He began to look at the little magistrate with curiosity.

  ‘These rillettes are splendid. They remind me of the ones we made on the farm when we slaughtered the pig. As I understand it, Maigret, you prefer to conduct your investigations alone, I mean just you and your colleagues, and to wait until you get some results before sending your report to the prosecutor’s office and the examining magistrate.’

  ‘We can’t really do that any more. All suspects have the right to have a lawyer with them even at the first interrogation. The lawyers don’t much like the atmosphere at Quai des Orfèvres and feel more at ease in front of a magistrate.’

  ‘I didn’t stay behind this morning and come to lunch with you simply to keep an eye on what you are doing, believe me, still less to rein you in. As I told you, I am curious about your methods and will learn a lot by watching you at work.’

  Maigret gave no reply to this compliment other than a vague shrug.

  ‘Is it true you have six children?’ he asked in turn.

  ‘It will be seven in three months’ time.’

  The magistrate’s eyes were laughing, as if he were playing a huge joke on society.

  ‘You know, it’s very educational. From a very early age children have the qualities and faults of grown-ups, so you get to know individuals by watching them live.’

  ‘Does your wife …’

  He was about to say: ‘Does your wife agree with you?’

  But the magistrate continued:

  ‘My wife’s dream is to be Mother Rabbit in her hutch. She is never happier and more carefree than when she is pregnant. She gets enormous, puts on up to thirty kilos, but she carries it easily.’

  A jolly, upbeat examining magistrate sampling the fillet of veal with lentils in an Auvergnat bistro as if he ate there every day.

  ‘You knew Manuel quite well, didn’t you?’

  ‘Almost twenty years.’

  ‘Was he a tough guy?’

  ‘Both tough and tender, it’s hard to say. When he arrived in Paris, after bumming around Marseille and the Côte d’Azur, he was ruthless and ambitious. Most of his sort soon become acquainted with the police, the courts, the assizes, prison.

  ‘Although Palmari frequented that circle, he kept his head down and when he bought the Clou Doré, which was only a bistro at the time, he didn’t need too much convincing to give us information about his customers.’

  ‘He was one of your informers?’

  ‘Yes and no. He held us at arm’s length, fed us just enough to keep on our right side. For example, he always made out that he didn’t see the two men who shot him as he was about to lower his shutters. Coincidentally, two hit-men from Marseille were shot dead in the South of France a few months afterwards.’

  ‘Did he get on well with Aline?’

  ‘He saw everything through her eyes. Make no mistake: despite her origins and her early experiences, this girl is someone to be reckoned with. She is far more intelligent than Palmari was and with the right sort of management she could have made a name for herself on the stage or screen. She could have turned her hand to anything.’

  ‘Do you think she loved him, despite the age difference?’

  ‘Experience has taught me that for women, for some of them at least, age doesn’t matter.’

  ‘So you don’t think she committed the murder this morning?’

  ‘I suspect no one and everyone.’

  There was only one other customer in there eating, and two others at the bar, workmen who were on a job in the neighbourhood. The fillet of veal was delicious, and Maigret couldn’t remember having eaten such succulent lentils. He made a note to come back here one day with his wife.

  ‘Knowing Palmari, the gun would have been in its usual place behind the radio this morning. If Aline didn’t kill him, then the murderer was someone Manuel trusted implicitly, probably someone who had a key to the apartment. But in the months that the building has been under surveillance, Palmari hasn’t received any visitors.

  ‘You’d have to pass through the living room, whose door is always open, go into the little room and walk round the wheelchair to get to the gun. If it was a villain, he knew all about the paraffin test. But I can’t see Palmari receiving a visitor who was wearing rubber gloves. Finally, my officers didn’t see anyone enter the building. When questioned, the concierge hadn’t seen anyone either. There is a butcher’s boy who makes deliveries every day at the same time, but he can be discounted.’

  ‘Someone might have got into the building yesterday evening or last night and stayed hidden on the stairs?’

  ‘That’s something I intend to look into this afternoon.’

  ‘You said earlier that you had no idea. Would it annoy you if I suggested you had something approaching an idea at the back of your mind?’

  ‘You’re right. Only, it may lead nowhere. The building has five floors, not counting the ground floor and the attic. There are two apartments on each floor. So there must be quite a few tenants.

  ‘For months, all of Palmari’s telephone calls were recorded, and they were all perfectly innocent.

  ‘I’ve never bought the fact that this man had withdrawn from the world completely. I had Aline followed every time she went out.

  ‘That’s how I discovered that she made telephone calls from the back room of a shop she used.

  ‘She also sometimes managed to give my men the slip for a few hours, using the classic trick of a building with two entrances – a department store or the Métro.

  ‘I have the dates of these telephone calls and these escapes. I have compared them to the dates of the jewellers’ shops burglaries.’

  ‘Do they match up?’

  ‘Yes and no. Not always. Often the telephone calls took place five or six days before a burglary. The mysterious escapes, on the other hand, sometimes happened just hours after the thefts. Draw your own conclusions, bearing in mind that the heists were nearly all carried out by young men with no previous record who had come up especially from the South or from the provinces. Would you like some more tart?’

  It was a juicy plum tart, flavoured with cinnamon.

  ‘If you’ll join me.’

  They washed down their meal with a brandy with no label which must have been at least 65 per cent proof and brought a flush to their cheeks.

  ‘I’m beginning to understand,’ the magistrate sighed as he too began to mop his brow. ‘A shame that I have to get back to the office and can’t follow your investigation step by step. Do you know what you’re going to do next?’

  ‘I have no idea. If I did have a plan I would be forced to change it in a few hours. For now I will concentrate on the tenants in the building. I’ll go round like a door-to-door salesman selling vacuum-cleaners. Then I’ll drop in on Aline again. She hasn’t told me everything yet and will have had time to reflect. That doesn’t mean that she will be any more forthcoming than this morning.’

  After a brief argument about the bill, they got up to leave.

  ‘I invited myself,’ the magistrate protested.

  ‘I’m almost on home ground here,’ Maigret insisted. ‘It will be your turn next time.’

  The landlord called out from behind the counter:

  ‘Enjoy your meal, gents?’

  ‘Very much.’

  So much, in fact, that they both felt a bit heavy, especially once they had emerged into the glare of the sun.
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  ‘Thanks for the lunch, Maigret. Remember to keep me up to date.’

  ‘I promise.’

  And as the florid magistrate slipped behind the wheel of his decrepit car, Maigret once more entered the building with which he was becoming increasingly familiar.

  He had eaten well. He still had a taste of the brandy in his mouth. The heat, even though it made him drowsy, was pleasant; the sun was full of joy.

  Manuel liked good meals and a good brandy too, and these fine, sleepy summer days.

  He was probably now lying under a rough sheet in one of the metal drawers of the Forensic Institute.

  Baron paced about the room, whistling. He had taken off his jacket and opened the window, and Maigret guessed that he was in a hurry to get something to eat, though only once he had downed a large beer.

  ‘You can go. Leave your report on my desk.’

  Maigret noticed Janvier, also in shirt-sleeves, in the little room, where he had lowered the Venetian blinds. When Maigret came in, he stood up, replaced the popular novel he was reading on the bookshelves and grabbed his jacket.

  ‘Has the cleaner gone?’

  ‘I questioned her before she left. She isn’t very talkative. She’s new, taken on at the start of the week. The old one has gone back to the provinces – Brittany, I think – to look after her sick mother.’

  ‘What time did she arrive today?’

  ‘Ten o’clock, according to her.’

  In Paris, as elsewhere, there are different types of cleaners. This one, who was called Madame Martin, was the most disagreeable type, those women who have suffered misfortune and continue to be a magnet for disaster and bear a grudge against the world as a whole.

  She wore a black dress that had become shapeless and down-at-heel shoes and she stared at people suspiciously, with a fierce look in her eyes, as if she was always anticipating being attacked.

  ‘I don’t know anything,’ she had told Janvier before he had even opened his mouth. ‘You have no right to pester me. I’ve only worked here four days.’

  You could tell she was in the habit of muttering vengeful phrases under her breath as she went about her solitary work.

  ‘I’m off, and no one can stop me. I’ll never set foot here again. I suspected they weren’t married and that it would all end in tears.’