Maigret and the Bum Page 3
“May we come in?”
He drew aside, astonished to see people like themselves entering his establishment. The place was minute, and apart from the counter there were only three tables for customers. The walls were painted apple green. From the ceiling there hung sausages, salami, and queer yellow cheeses shaped like bulging goatskin-bottles.
“What can I bring you?”
“Some wine…”
“Chianti?”
Flasks in straw covers lined a whole shelf, but the proprietor filled their glassed from a bottle standing under the counter, meanwhile watching the two men with curiosity.
“Do you know the vagrant who’s known as the Doc?”
“How is he? I hope he hasn’t died?”
The Italian accent and the gesticulations of the proprietor contrasted with the Flemish accent and calm bearing of Jef Van Houtte and his brother.
“You know what has happened?” Maigret asked.
“I know something happened to him last night.”
“Who told you?”
“Another of the dossers, this morning…”
“What were you told, exactly?”
“That there had been a to-do near the Pont Marie and that an ambulance had come to fetch away the Doc. ”
“Anything else?”
“Seems that the bargees fished him out of the water…”
“Did the Doc buy his wine from you?”
“Often…”
“Did he drink a lot?”
“About two litres a day…when he had the money…”
“How did he earn it?”
“Like they all do…Odd jobs in the market or elsewhere…Or else walking the streets with advertisement boards…I was always glad to let him have it on credit…”
“Why?”
“Because he wasn’t a no-good like the rest… He saved my wife… ”
The woman was there in the kitchen, almost as stout as Lea but very alert.
“You’re talking about me?”
“ I was telling how the Doc… ”
Then she came into the bar, wiping her hands on her apron. “Is it true that someone tried to kill him? Are you from the police? D’you think he’s going to get over it?”
“We don’t know yet,” the Superintendent replied evasively. “What did he do for you?”
“Well, if you’d seen me a couple of years ago you’d not have recognised me…I was covered with eczema and my face was as red as a piece of meat on a butcher’s slab…It had been going on for months and months…At the outpatient’s they tried out all sorts of treatments on me, they gave me ointments that smelt so horrible that I was disgusted with myself…Nothing did any good. I was hardly allowed to eat anything and in any case I’d lost my appetite…And they gave me injections…”
The landlord listened, nodding.
One day when the Doc was sitting there, in that corner by the door, and I was complaining to the greengrocery woman, I felt he was looking at me in an odd sort of way…A little later he said to me in the same tone of voice as though he’d been ordering a glass of wine:
“I think I can cure you… ”
“I asked him if he was really a doctor and he smiled.
“I’ve not been disqualified from practising, ” he said quietly.”
“Did he give you a prescription?”
“No. He asked me for a little money, two hundred francs if I remember rightly, and he went off himself to get some little packets of powder from the chemist.
“ ‘Take one in warm water before each meal…And wash yourself, morning and night, in very salty water… ’
“Believe it or not, two months after that my skin was all right again…”
“Did he attend anyone else besides you?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t talk much.”
“Did he come here every day?”
“Practically every day, to buy his couple of litres…”
“Was he always by himself? Did you never see him with anyone you didn’t know?”
“No…”
“Did he never tell you his real name, nor where he lived formerly?”
“I only know he had a daughter… We’ve got one, who’s at school now… Once when she was staring at him curiously he said to her:
“Don’t be afraid of me…I’ve got a little girl too…”
Lapointe was probably somewhat surprised to see Maigret attach so much importance to the story of this down-and-out. In the press it would have provided merely a few lines among the news items.
What Lapointe did not know, because he was too young, was that this was the first time in Maigret’s career that a crime had been committed against one of the down-and-out.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Won’t you have one more? To drink the health to poor old Doc?”
They drank the second glass, for which the Italian refused to let them pay. Then they crossed over the Pont Marie. A few minutes later they went in under the grey archway of the Hôtel-Dieu. Here they had a lengthy argument with a cantankerous woman keeping guard behind a window.
“You don’t know his name?”
“Only that he’s known on the embankment as the Doc and that he was brought here last night…”
“Last night I wasn’t here…Which department have they taken him to?”
“I don’t know…Just now I spoke on the telephone to an intern who said nothing about an operation…”
“Do you know the name of the intern?”
“No…”
She flicked over the pages of the register and made two or three telephone calls.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Superintendent Maigret…”
The name meant nothing to the woman, who repeated into the receiver:
“Superintendent Maigret…”
Finally, after about ten minutes, she sighed, as though granting them a favour:
“Take staircase C. Go up to the third floor…Ask for the Sister in charge of that floor…”
They met nurses, young doctors, patients in hospital uniform, and through open doors caught sight of rows of beds.
On the third floor they had to wait yet again, for the Sister in charge was having an animated discussion with two men, whose request she appeared to be refusing.
“I can’t do anything about it,” she finally flung at them. “Speak to head office. I don’t make the rules.”
They went off, muttering uncomplimentary remarks between their teeth, and she turned to Maigret.
“Is it you who’ve come about the vagrant? ”
“Superintendent Maigret…” he repeated.
She was searching her memory. The name meant nothing to her either. This was another world, a world of numbered wards, of separate departments, of beds lined up in huge rooms, each bed having at its foot a card inscribed with mysterious signs.
“How is he?”
“I believe Professor Magnin is with him at this moment…”
“Has he been operated on?”
“Who said anything to you about an operation?”
“I don’t know…I thought…”
Maigret did not feel at home here and it made him diffident.
“Under what name have you registered him?”
“The name on his identity card.”
“Have you got the card?”
“I can show you.”
She went into a small glass-panelled office at the end of the passage and promptly found a filthy identity card still damp from the water of the Seine.
Surname: Keller.
First names: François Marie Florentin.
Occupation: rag-and-bone man.
Birthplace: Mulhouse, Bas-Rhin.
According to this document, the man was sixty-three years old and his address in Paris was a doss-house in the Place Maubert, which the Superintendent knew quite well and which served as official residence for a number of vagrants.
“Has he recovered conscio
usness?”
She tried to take back the identity card, which the Superintendent was putting into his pocket, and she grumbled:
“It’s not in order…The regulations…”
“Is Keller in a private ward?”
“Whatever next?”
“Take me to him…”
She hesitated, but eventually gave way.
“Well, you’ll have to settle things with the Professor…”
Leading the way, she opened the third door, disclosing two rows of beds, all occupied. Most of the patients were lying down, and their eyes were open; two or three were standing about at the far end of the room, wearing hospital clothes, and chatting in low voices.
Beside one of the beds, in the middle of the room, a dozen young men and women in white coats and caps stood round a short, broad-shouldered man with crew-cut hair, also clad in white, who appeared to be giving them a lecture.
“You can’t disturb him just now…You see he’s busy…”
However, she went up and whispered a few words in the ear of the professor, who cast a glance in Maigret’s direction and went on with his explanations.
“He’ll have finished in a few minutes. He asks you to wait in his office…”
She took them there. It was a small room with only a couple of chairs in it. On the desk stood the silver-framed photograph of a woman and three children with their heads close together.
Maigret hesitated, then emptied his pipe into the ash-tray, which was crammed with cigarette-ends, and filled himself another.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting, Superintendent. When Sister told me you were there I was a bit surprised…After all…”
Was he, too, going to say that after all, the patient was merely a down-and-out? No.
“…It’s a straightforward business, I suppose?”
“I scarcely know anything about it yet and I’m counting on you to enlighten me…”
“It’s a fracture of the skull, a nice clean one, luckily, as my assistant must have told you over the phone this morning…”
“They hadn’t X-rayed him then…”
“That’s been done now…He’s a good chance of pulling through, for the brain doesn’t appear to be damaged…”
“Could the fracture have been caused by a fall on the embankment?”
“Certainly not…The man had been struck a violent blow with some heavy instrument such as a hammer, a spanner or a tyre-lever…”
“Did it make him lose consciousness?”
“He lost consciousness to such an extent that he’s still in a coma and may remain in it for several days…Or on the other hand he might come round at any moment…”
Maigret kept visualising the river bank, the Doc’s shelter, the muddy water flowing a few yards away, and he recalled the remarks of the Flemish bargee.
“Forgive me for persisting…You say he’d had a blow on the head…Only one?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“It might be important.”
“At first glance I thought he might have received several blows…”
“Why?”
“Because one ear is torn and there are a number of superficial wounds on the face…Now that he’s been shaved I had a closer look…”
“And your conclusion?”
“Where did it happen?”
“Under the Pont Marie.”
“During a fight?”
“Apparently not. The man seems to have been lying asleep when he was attacked…According to your observations, is that plausible?”
“Quite plausible…”
“And do you think he lost consciousness immediately?”
“I’m practically sure of that…And after what you’ve just told me, I can account for the torn ear and the scratches on the face. He was picked up out of the Seine, wasn’t he?…These minor injuries suggest that instead of being carried there he was dragged over the stones along the embankment…Is there any sand on that part of the embankment?”
“They’re unloading sand from a barge a few yards away. ”
“I found traces of sand in the wounds.”
“In your opinion, then, the Doc…”
“What did you say?” the professor asked in some surprise.
“That’s what they call him, on the embankment…It’s possible he may really have been a doctor…”
And this was the first time, in thirty years, that Maigret had come across a doctor living under the bridges. He could remember finding there a former chemistry master from a provincial lycée, and a few years later a woman who had been a famous circus rider in her time.
“I’m convinced that he was lying down and probably asleep when his attacker, or attackers, struck him…”
“Only one person must have struck him, since there was only a single blow…”
“Quite true…He then lost consciousness, so that he must have appeared dead…”
“That’s very plausible.”
“He was then dragged rather than carried to the edge of the Seine and tipped into the water…”
The doctor was listening gravely, with a thoughtful look.
“Does that hold together?” Maigret persisted.
“Perfectly well.”
“Is it medically possible that when he was in the river, being swept away by the current, he should have begun to scream?”
The professor scratched his head.
“You’re asking a good deal of me and I shouldn’t like to give you a categorical answer…Let’s say that I don’t consider the thing impossible. On coming into contact with cold water…”
“Would he have recovered consciousness, then?”
“Not necessarily…Patients in a coma sometimes speak and move about…Let’s assume…”
“Did he say nothing while you were examining him?”
“He gave an occasional moan.”
“I was told that when he was picked out of the water his eyes were open…”
“That proves nothing… I suppose you’d like to see him?…Come with me…”
He took them along to the third floor, and the Ward Sister watched them pass in with some surprise and also no doubt with some disapproval.
The patients lying in their beds stared at the little party as it moved forward and came to a halt at one of the bedsides.
“There’s not much to be seen…”
Indeed, there was nothing to be seen but the bandages that surrounded the dosser’s face and head, revealing the eyes nose and mouth.
“What are his chances of recovery?”
“Seventy per cent…Say eighty, for his heart’s still strong…”
“Thank you very much…”
“You’ll be informed as soon as he recovers consciousness… Leave your phone number with the Ward Sister…”
It felt good to be outside again and to see the sun, the people in the street, a red and yellow coach unloading its tourists on the parvis of Notre-Dame.
Once again, Maigret walked along in silence, his hands behind his back, and Lapointe, realising that he was preoccupied, avoided speaking.
They went under the archway of Police Headquarters, and climbed up the big staircase which looked even dustier than usual in the sunlight, finally reaching the Superintendent’s office.
The first thing Maigret did was to fling the windows wide open and look down at a string of barges drifting downstream.
“We’ll have to send somebody from up there to look at his things…”
Up there meant the Police Records Office, with its technicians and specialists.
“The best thing would be to take the van and remove the whole lot. ”
He had no fear of other vagrants seizing the Doc’s few belongings, but he was afraid, rather, of thieving urchins.
“Will you go to the Highways Department, mean while… There can’t be all that many red 403’s in Paris…Make a note of all the numbers that include two nines…Get help from as many men as you need to check up the owners…
”
“Right, Chief…”
Once he was alone, Maigret set out his pipes and looked through the official correspondence piled up on his desk. Because of the fine weather, he wondered whether to lunch at the Brasserie Dauphine and finally decided to go home.
At this time of day the dining-room was flooded with sunlight. Madame Maigret was wearing a dress with pink flowers and it reminded him of Big Lea’s blouse, which was almost the same pink.
He was deep in thought as he ate his foie de veau en papillotes, and his wife asked him:
“What are you thinking about?”
“About my tramp. ”
“What tramp?”
“A fellow who may once have been a doctor…”
“What has he done?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. But he nearly got his head split open while he was asleep under the Pont Marie…and then he was thrown into the water…”
“Did he die?”
“Some bargees fished him out in time…”
“Why had somebody got it in for him?”
“That’s what I’m wondering…As it happens, he comes from the same part of the world as your brother-in-law…”
Madame Maigret’s sister lived at Mulhouse with her husband, a civil engineer. The Maigrets had quite often been to visit her.
“What’s his name?”
“Keller…François Keller…”
“It’s funny, but the name seems to ring a bell…”
“It’s a fairly common name in those parts…”
“Suppose I ring up my sister?”
He shrugged his shoulders. Why not? He did not put much faith in it, but it would give his wife pleasure.
As soon as she had served coffee, she rang up Mulhouse; she had only a few minutes to wait for the connection, and during that time she kept saying to herself, as though trying to recollect:
“Keller…François Keller…”
The telephone bell rang.
“Hullo!…Hullo, yes!…Yes, mademoiselle, I asked for Mulhouse…Is that you, Florence?…What d’you say?…Yes, it’s me…why no, nothing’s the matter… From Paris…I’m at home…He’s just beside me, drinking his coffee…He’s fine… Every thing’s fine… Yes, so it is here…Spring at last…
“How are the children?…Flu? I had it last week…not badly…Listen…That’s not what I’m ringing up about…Do you by any chance remember somebody called Keller?…François Keller?… What’s that?…I’ll ask him…”