Friend of Madame Maigret Page 4

  “We had lunch at half past twelve.”

  “Would he go back to work at once?”

  “Nearly always, after spending a few minutes in the doorway smoking a cigarette, because he didn’t smoke while he was working.

  “This would go on until seven o’clock, sometimes half past seven. I never knew what time we’d have dinner, because he always wanted to finish the job he was on. Then he would put up the shutters, wash his hands, and after dinner we would read, in this room, until ten or eleven o’clock.

  “Except on Friday evenings, when we went to the Saint-Paul Cinema.”

  “He didn’t drink?”

  “A glass of brandy every night after dinner. Just one little glass, which would last him an hour, because he never took more than a sip at a time.”

  “And on Sundays? Did you go to the country?”

  “Never. He hated the country. We would loaf about all morning without getting dressed. He went in for carpentry a bit. He made these shelves himself and just about everything we have here. In the afternoons we’d go for a walk in the Francs-Bourgeois district or on the Île Saint-Louis, and we often had dinner at a little restaurant near the Pont-Neuf.”

  “Is he stingy?”

  She blushed and answered less spontaneously, with a question, as women do when they are embarrassed:

  “Why do you ask me that?”

  “He’s been working like this for more than twenty years, hasn’t he?”

  “He’s worked all his life. His mother was very poor. He had an unhappy childhood.”

  “And yet he’s supposed to be the most expensive bookbinder in Paris and he turns away more orders than he asks for.”

  “That’s true.”

  “On what he earns you could live comfortably, with a modern flat and even a car.”

  “What would be the point?”

  “He claims that he’s never had more than one suit at a time, and your wardrobe doesn’t seem any more extensive.”

  “I don’t need anything. We eat well.”

  “You can’t spend more than a third of what he earns on living expenses.”

  “I don’t pay any attention to money matters.”

  “Most men work for some special goal. Some want a house in the country, others have dreams of retiring, others do it for the sake of their children. He had no children, had he?”

  “Unfortunately I can’t have any.”

  “And before your time?”

  “No. He never knew any women, in a manner of speaking. He made do with you know what, and that’s how I met him.”

  “What does he do with his money?”

  “I don’t know. I expect he invests it.”

  They had, in fact, discovered a bank account in Steuvels’s name at the O Branch of the Société Géndérale, in the rue Saint-Antoine. Nearly every week the bookbinder would deposit petty sums that corresponded to the amounts received from customers.

  “He worked for the pleasure of working. He’s a Fleming. I’m beginning to know what that means. He was capable of spending hours on a binding just for the joy of producing something out of the ordinary.”

  It was odd: sometimes she would speak of him in the past tense, as if the walls of the Santé Gaol had already cut him off from the world, sometimes in the present, as if he would be home any minute.

  “He kept in touch with his family, did he?”

  “He never knew his father. He was brought up by an uncle, who placed him in a charity home when he was very young, which was lucky for him, because that’s where he learned his trade. They were badly treated, and he doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  There was no exit from the flat except the workshop door. To reach the courtyard it was necessary to go out into the street and under the archway, past the concierge’s lodge.

  It was amazing, at the Quai des Orfèvres, to hear Lucas rattling off all these names, which Maigret could hardly keep straight, Madame Salazar the concierge, Mademoiselle Béguin, the fourth-floor tenant, the cobbler, the umbrella shopkeeper, the dairy woman and her maid; he talked about one and all as though he had always known them and could list their various idiosyncrasies.

  “What are you preparing for him for tomorrow?”

  “Ragout of lamb. He likes his food. Just now you seemed to be asking me what his chief interest is, apart from work. It’s probably eating. And although he’s sitting down all day and gets no fresh air nor exercise, I’ve never seen a man with such an appetite.”

  “Before he met you had he any men friends?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s never mentioned them.”

  “Did he live here then?”

  “Yes. He kept house for himself. Except that once a week Madame Salazar would come and clean up properly. It may be because we don’t need her any more that she’s never liked me.”

  “Do the neighbors know?”

  “What I used to do? No; at least, not until Frans was arrested. It was the reporters who brought that up.”

  “Are they cutting you?”

  “Some of them. But Frans was so well liked that they’re more inclined to be sorry for us.”

  This was true on the whole. If a count had been made in the street of those for them and those against, the “fors” would certainly have won.

  But the residents of the neighborhood didn’t want it to be over too soon, any more than the newspaper readers did. The deeper the mystery, the more bitter the contest between Police Headquarters and Philippe Liotard, the more delighted people were.

  “What did Alfonsi want you for?”

  “He didn’t have time to tell me. He’d just arrived when you came in. I don’t like the way he comes in here as if it were a public place, with his hat on his head, saying tu to me and calling me by my Christian name. If Frans were here he’d have put him out long ago.”

  “Is he jealous?”

  “He doesn’t like familiarities.”

  “He loves you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps because I love him.”

  He didn’t smile. He hadn’t kept his hat on, as Alfonsi had. He wasn’t being rough and he wasn’t wearing his crafty expression either.

  There in the basement, he really looked like a big man who was honestly trying to understand.

  “Obviously you’re not going to say anything that may be used against him.”

  “Of course not. Anyhow, I have nothing of the sort to say.”

  “And yet it’s equally obvious that a man was killed in this basement.”

  “The experts say so, and I’m not clever enough to contradict them. In any case it wasn’t Frans.”

  “It seems impossible that it could have happened without his knowledge.”

  “I know what you’re going to say, but I tell you again that he’s innocent.”

  Maigret stood up, sighing. He was glad she hadn’t offered him a drink, as so many people feel obliged to do in such circumstances.

  “I’m trying to start afresh at the beginning,” he admitted. “My intention in coming here was to go over the scene again inch by inch.”

  “Aren’t you going to do so? They’ve turned everything upside down so many times!”

  “I don’t feel in the mood for it. I may come back. I expect I’ll have some more questions to ask you.”

  “You know that I tell Frans everything on visiting day?”

  “Yes, I understand you.”

  He started up the narrow stairs, and she followed him into the workshop, now almost dark, and opened the door for him. Both of them simultaneously noticed Alfonsi waiting at the corner of the street.

  “Are you going to let him in?”

  “I’m wondering. I’m tired.”

  “Would you like me to tell him to leave you in peace?”

  “For tonight in any case.”

  “Good night.”

  She said good night too, and he walked heavily toward the former Vice Squad detective.
When he came up to him, on the corner, two young reporters were watching them from the window of the Tabac des Vosges.

  “Buzz off!”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind. Because she doesn’t want you bothering her again tonight. See?”

  “Why are you so nasty to me?”

  “Simply because I don’t like your face.”

  And turning his back on him, he conformed to tradition by going into the Grand Turenne for a glass of beer.

  3

  The sun was still shining brightly, and there was a nip in the air that caused a cloud of vapor at your lips and froze your fingertips. All the same, Maigret had decided to stand outside on the platform of the bus and he was alternately grunting and smiling in spite of himself as he read the morning paper.

  He was early. It was barely half past eight by his watch when he entered the inspectors’ office at the very moment when Janvier, perched on a table, was trying to get down, hiding the newspaper from which he had been reading aloud.

  There were five or six of them in there, mostly the young ones; they were waiting for Lucas to give them their day’s orders. They avoided looking at the chief inspector, and some of them, casting a furtive glance at him, could hardly keep a straight face.

  They had no way of knowing that the story had amused him just as much as it had them, and that it was simply to please them, because they expected it, that he was wearing his grumpy expression.

  A headline was spread across three columns on the front page:

  MME MAIGRET’S MISADVENTURE

  The adventure experienced the previous day in the place d’Anvers by the chief inspector’s wife was recounted down to the last detail, and the only thing lacking was a photograph of Madame Maigret herself with the little boy left on her hands in such a cavalier fashion.

  He pushed open the door to call on Lucas, who had read the story too and had good reason to take the matter more seriously.

  “I hope you didn’t think I was responsible for it? I was thunderstruck this morning when I opened the paper. Honestly, I didn’t talk to a single reporter. Just after our conversation yesterday I rang Lamballe, of the Ninth Arrondissement, and I had to tell him the story, but without mentioning your wife’s name, when I asked him to try to find the taxi. By the way, he’s just phoned to say that by sheer chance he’s already found the driver. He’s sending him over. The man will be here in a few minutes.”

  “Was there anyone in your office when you rang Lamballe?”

  “Probably. There’s always somebody in here. And no doubt the door to the inspectors’ office was open. But who? It frightens me to think that there might be a leak right here.”

  “I suspected it yesterday. There was a leak as far back as February 21, because when you went to the rue de Turenne to search the bookbinder’s premises, Philippe Liotard had already been notified.”

  “Who by?”

  “I don’t know. It can only be somebody in the building.”

  “That’s why the suitcase had disappeared by the time I got there.”

  “More than likely.”

  “In that case why didn’t they dispose of the blood-stained suit too?”

  “Perhaps they didn’t think of it, or else they thought we wouldn’t find out what kind of stains they were. Perhaps they didn’t have time.”

  “Do you want me to question the inspectors, chief?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Lucas had not finished going through his post, which was stacked up on the long table he was using as a desk.

  “Nothing interesting?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to check. Several tips about the suitcase, of course. An anonymous letter states simply that it hasn’t left the rue de Turenne and that we must be blind not to find it. Another claims that the root of the matter is at Concarneau. A five-page letter, closely written, reveals with supporting arguments that the government itself fabricated the whole business out of nothing at all in order to divert attention from the cost of living.”

  Maigret went into his own office, took off his hat and coat, stoked right up, despite the mildness of the weather, the only coal stove still in existence at the Quai des Orfèvres, which he had had such a hard job to retain when central heating was installed.

  Opening the inspectors’ door a crack, he called in little Lapointe, who had just arrived.

  “Sit down.”

  He closed the door again carefully, told the young man once more to sit down, and walked around him once or twice, glancing at him curiously.

  “You’re ambitious, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, chief inspector. I’d like to have a career like yours. That’s what you might call presumptuous, isn’t it?”

  “Are your parents well off?”

  “No. My father’s a bank clerk, at Meulan, and he had a hard time bringing us up decently, my sisters and myself.”

  “Are you in love?”

  He didn’t blush, didn’t seem embarrassed.

  “No. Not yet. I still have time. I’m only twenty-four and I don’t want to get married before I’m settled.”

  “Do you live by yourself in a furnished room?”

  “Fortunately not. My youngest sister, Germaine, is in Paris too. She works for a publisher on the Left Bank. We share a place, and at night she has time to cook for us, and that’s a saving.”

  “Has she a young man?”

  “She’s only eighteen.”

  “The first time you went to the rue de Turenne did you come straight back here?”

  He suddenly blushed, hesitated a moment before replying.

  “No,” he finally admitted. “I was so proud and happy at having discovered something that I treated myself to a taxi and went around to the rue du Bac to tell Germaine about it.”

  “That’s all, my boy. Thanks.”

  Lapointe, uneasy, worried, was reluctant to leave.

  “Why did you ask me that?”

  “I’m the one who asks the questions, aren’t I? Later on maybe you’ll get a chance to do some interrogating too. You were in Sergeant Lucas’s office yesterday when he telephoned the Ninth Arrondissement?”

  “I was in the next office, and the door between them was open.”

  “What time did you talk to your sister?”

  “How do you know I did?”

  “Answer me.”

  “She stops work at five. She waited for me, as she often does, at the Bar de la Grosse Horloge, and we had a drink together before going home.”

  “Were you with her all evening?”

  “She went to the pictures with a girlfriend.”

  “Did you see her girlfriend?”

  “No. But I know her.”

  “That’s all. You can go.”

  He would have liked to offer a bit more explanation, but someone came to tell the chief inspector that a taxi driver was asking to see him. This was a big, red-faced man of around fifty who must have driven a hackney carriage in his younger days and who, to judge by his breath, had certainly swallowed several glasses of white wine for the good of his stomach before coming in.

  “Inspector Lamballe told me to come and see you about the young lady.”

  “How did he find out that it was you whose fare she was?”

  “I’m usually in the rank in the place Pigalle, and he came over for a word with me last night, the same as he had a word with all of us. It was me who picked her up.”

  “What time? Where?”

  “It must have been about one o’clock. I was finishing my lunch at a restaurant in the rue Lepic. My cab was outside. I saw a couple leaving the hotel opposite, and the woman immediately made a dash for my taxi. She seemed to be disappointed when she saw the flag was down. Since I’d got as far as my liqueur, I stood up and called across the street to her to wait.”

  “What was her companion like?”

  “A fat little man, very well dressed, like a foreigner. Between forty and fifty, I can’t say exactly. I didn�
��t look at him much. He was turned toward her and was talking to her in a foreign language.”

  “What language?”

  “I don’t know. I come from Pantin and I’ve never been able to tell one lingo from another.”

  “What address did she give?”

  “She was jumpy, impatient. She asked me to go to the place d’Anvers first and slow down. She was looking out of the window.

  “Then she said, ‘Stop a minute and drive on again when I tell you.’

  “She was beckoning to somebody. A motherly old soul was walking toward us with a little boy. The lady opened the door, pulled the kid in, and ordered me to drive on.”

  “Didn’t it look to you like a kidnapping?”

  “No, because she spoke to the lady. Not for long. Just a few words. And the lady seemed more relieved than anything else.”

  “Where did you take the mother and child?”

  “First to the Porte de Neuilly. There she changed her mind and asked me to drive to the Gare Saint-Lazare.”

  “Did she get out there?”

  “No. She stopped me in the place Saint-Augustin. Due to the fact that I got caught in a traffic jam there, I saw her in my mirror hailing another cab, one of the Urbaine’s, but I didn’t have time to get its number.”

  “Did you try to?”

  “Out of habit. She was really in a state. And it was a bit queer, after taking me all the way to the Porte de Neuilly, to stop me on the place Saint-Augustin just to get into another cab.”

  “Did she talk to the child on the way?”

  “A sentence or two, to keep him quiet. Is there a reward?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know yet.”

  “You see, I’ve wasted my morning.”

  Maigret handed him a note and a few minutes later was pushing open the door of the director of Police Headquarters, where the conference had begun. The department heads were there, grouped round the big mahogany desk, talking quietly about current cases.

  “What about you, Maigret? And your Steuvels?”

  From their smiles it was obvious that they had all read the morning’s story; once more, and again just to please them, he pretended to be disgruntled.

  It was half past nine. The telephone rang, the director answered, handed the receiver to Maigret.