The Yellow Dog Read online

  ‘I don’t understand,’ stammered Leroy.

  ‘Of course not. Give me your notes.’

  ‘But … who told you I …’

  ‘Let’s see them.’

  The inspector’s notebook was a cheap little graph-paper pad with an oilcloth cover. Leroy’s was a loose-leaf daybook in a steel binder.

  His manner paternal, Maigret read:

  1. Matter of Mostaguen: The bullet that hit the wine dealer was certainly intended for someone else. As there was no way to foresee that anyone would stop randomly at that doorway, the real target must have been expected there, but never came, or came too late.

  Unless the purpose was to terrorize the population. The perpetrator knows Concarneau intimately. (Neglected to analyse cigarette ashes found in hallway.)

  2. Matter of poisoned Pernod: In wintertime, the Admiral café is empty almost all day. Anyone who knew this could enter and put poison in the bottles. In two bottles. Thus it was aimed specifically at the drinkers of Pernod and calvados. (Note, however, that the doctor spotted, in time and easily, the grains of white powder floating in the liquid.)

  3. Matter of yellow dog: He knows the Admiral café. He has a master. But who? Seems to be at least five years old.

  4. Matter of Servières: Determine by handwriting analysis who sent article to Brest Beacon.

  Maigret smiled, handed the book back to his companion and remarked: ‘Very good, my boy.’

  Then, with an irritable glance at the gawkers’ silhouettes beyond the green windows, he added, ‘Let’s go and eat!’

  A little later, when they were in the dining room, along with the travelling salesman who had arrived that morning, Emma informed them that Dr Michoux was feeling worse and had asked for a light meal to be sent to his room.

  That afternoon the Admiral café was like a cage in the zoo, what with sightseers filing past its small dim windows in their Sunday best. They then headed towards the far end of the harbour to the next attraction – Servières’ car, still guarded by two policemen.

  The mayor phoned three times from his sumptuous house at White Sands. ‘Have you made an arrest?’

  Maigret barely bothered to answer.

  The young crowd, those from eighteen to twenty-five, invaded the café. Noisy groups took over tables and ordered drinks, which they never touched. They weren’t in the café more than five minutes before their jokes petered out, their laughter died down, and awkwardness gave way to bluffing. And one by one they left.

  The difference in the town was more apparent when it came time to light the street lamps. It was four o’clock. Ordinarily at that hour the streets would still be busy. That evening, they were deserted, and deathly silent. It was as if the strollers had passed the word. In less than a quarter of an hour the streets had emptied, and when footsteps sounded, they were the hurried ones of someone anxious to get to the shelter of home.

  Emma leaned on her elbows at the till. The proprietor went back and forth between the kitchen and the café, where Maigret stubbornly refused to listen to his lamentations.

  Ernest Michoux came downstairs at about 4.30, still in slippers. Stubble covered his cheeks. His cream silk scarf was stained with sweat.

  ‘Ah, you’re here, inspector!’ The fact seemed to comfort him. ‘And your officer?’

  ‘I sent him off to look around town.’

  ‘The dog?’

  ‘Hasn’t been seen since this morning.’

  The floor was grey, the marble of the tables a harsh white veined with blue. Through the windows, the glowing Old Town clock was dimly visible, now showing ten minutes to five.

  ‘We still don’t know who wrote that article?’

  The newspaper lay on the table. By this point only one headline stood out:

  WHOSE TURN NEXT?

  The telephone jangled. Emma answered. ‘No … Nothing … I don’t know anything.’

  ‘Who was it?’ Maigret asked.

  ‘Another Paris paper. They said their reporters are arriving by car.’

  She had hardly finished the sentence when the phone rang again.

  ‘It’s for you, inspector.’

  The doctor, pale as a ghost, kept his eyes on Maigret.

  ‘Hello! Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s Leroy … I’m over in the Old Town, near the channel inlet. There’s been a shooting here … A shoemaker saw the yellow dog from his window and—’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Wounded! Badly. In the hindquarters. The animal can barely drag himself along. People don’t dare go near him … I’m calling from a café. The dog is in the middle of the street – I can see him through the window. He’s howling … What should I do?’ And despite his effort to keep calm, the officer’s voice was tense, as if the wounded yellow dog were some supernatural creature. ‘There are people at every window … What should I do, inspector? Finish him off?’

  His colour leaden, the doctor stood behind Maigret, asking fearfully, ‘What is it? … What’s he saying?’

  And the inspector saw Emma leaning on the counter, her expression blank.

  4. Field Headquarters

  Maigret crossed the drawbridge, passed through the Old Town ramparts and turned down a crooked, poorly lit street. What the people of Concarneau call ‘the closed town’ – the old section still surrounded by its walls – is one of the most densely populated parts.

  As the inspector advanced, however, he entered a zone of ever more ambiguous silence, the silence of a crowd hypnotized by a spectacle and trembling with fear or impatience. Here and there, a few isolated voices, those of adolescents determined to sound bold, could be heard.

  One last bend in the street and he reached the scene: a narrow lane, with someone at every window, the rooms behind them lit with oil lamps; a glimpse of beds; in the street a mob blocking the way, and, beyond, a large open space, from which came the sound of hoarse breathing.

  Maigret pushed through the spectators, mostly youngsters, who were startled by his arrival. Two of them were pelting the dog with stones. Their companions tried to stop them. They heard – or rather, sensed – the warning.

  One of the boys flushed to the ears when Maigret shoved him to the left and strode towards the wounded animal. The silence then took on a different character. It was clear that a few moments earlier an unwholesome frenzy had been driving the crowd, except for one old woman, who cried from her window:

  ‘It’s shameful! You should haul them all in, inspector. The whole bunch of them were torturing that poor creature … And I know perfectly well why. They’re afraid of him!’

  The shoemaker-gunman withdrew sheepishly into his shop. Maigret leaned down to stroke the dog’s head; the animal gave him a look that was more puzzled than grateful. Leroy came out of the café from which he had telephoned. The crowd began reluctantly to move away.

  ‘Someone get a wheelbarrow.’

  Windows were closing one after another, but inquisitive shadows hovered behind the curtains. The dog was filthy, his dense coat matted with blood. His belly was muddy, his nose dry and burning. Now that someone was showing kindness, he took heart and stopped trying to creep along the ground through the dozens of large stones that lay around him.

  ‘Where should we take him, inspector?’

  ‘To the hotel … Easy there … Put some straw under him.’

  The procession could have looked ridiculous. Instead, by some eerie effect of the anguish that had grown steadily stronger since morning, it was stirring. With an old man pushing it, the wheelbarrow bounced over the cobblestones of the twisting street and on to the drawbridge. No one dared follow it. The yellow dog panted hard, an occasional spasm stiffening his four legs.

  Maigret noticed an unfamiliar car parked opposite the Admiral Hotel. He pushed open the café door and found the atmosphere transformed.

  A
man squeezed past him, saw the dog being lifted out of the wheelbarrow, aimed a camera at the animal and set off a magnesium flash. Another, dressed in plus fours and a red sweater, with notebook in hand, touched the visor of his cap.

  ‘Inspector Maigret? Vasco, from the Journal. I’ve just got here and already I’ve been lucky enough to meet Monsieur …’ He indicated Michoux, who was in his corner, slouching against the moleskin banquette. ‘The Petit Parisien is right behind. They broke down about ten kilometres back.’

  ‘Where do you want the dog?’ Emma asked the inspector.

  ‘Isn’t there a spot for him in the hotel?’

  ‘Yes, near the courtyard … a porch where we store empty bottles.’

  ‘Leroy! Phone a vet.’

  An hour earlier, the place had been deserted, seething with silence. Now, the photographer, in an off-white trenchcoat, was shoving tables and chairs around and yelling, ‘Wait a minute! Hold it, please! Turn the dog’s head this way …’ And the magnesium flared.

  ‘Le Pommeret?’ Maigret asked Dr Michoux.

  ‘He left not long after you did … The mayor phoned again. I think he may be on his way over …’

  By nine that evening, the place had become a sort of military headquarters. Two more reporters had arrived. One was working on his story at a table towards the back. From time to time the photographer came down from his room. ‘You wouldn’t have any rubbing alcohol? I’ve absolutely got to have it to dry my film … The dog looks terrific! … Did you say there’s a pharmacy nearby? … Closed? Doesn’t matter.’

  At the hall phone, a reporter was dictating his story, in an offhand voice: ‘Maigret, yes – M as in Maurice, A as in Arthur … Yes. I as in Isidore … Take down all the names first … Michoux – M, I, choux, that’s chou as in choucroute … No, no, not like pou. Now wait – I’m going to give you the headlines … Will this go on page one? … Absolutely! Tell the boss it’s got to go on the front page …’

  Feeling lost, Leroy kept looking at Maigret as if to get his bearings. In a corner, the lone travelling salesman was preparing his next day’s route with the help of the regional directory. Now and then he would call over to Emma.

  ‘Chauffier’s … is that a big hardware outlet? … Thanks.’

  The vet had removed the bullet and set the dog’s hindquarters in a cast. ‘These animals, it takes a lot to kill them!’

  Emma had spread an old blanket over straw on the blue granite floor of the porch that gave on to both the courtyard and the cellar stairway. The dog lay there, all alone, inches from a scrap of meat he never touched.

  The mayor arrived by car. He was a very well-groomed elderly man with a small white goatee; his gestures were curt. His eyebrows rose as he entered and noticed the atmosphere of a guardroom – or, more precisely, a field headquarters.

  ‘Who are these gentlemen?’

  ‘Reporters from Paris.’

  The mayor was very touchy. ‘Wonderful! So tomorrow the whole country will be talking about this idiotic business! … You still haven’t found out anything?’

  ‘The investigation is still going on!’ growled Maigret, as if to say, ‘None of your business!’

  For the atmosphere was really tense. Everyone’s nerves were on edge.

  ‘And you, Michoux, you’re not going home?’ The mayor’s look of contempt made clear that he thought the doctor a coward.

  ‘At this rate,’ he said, turning back to Maigret, ‘there’ll be full-scale panic within the next twenty-four hours … What we need – as I told you before – is an arrest, no matter who.’ He emphasized his last words with a glance at Emma. ‘I know I have no authority to give you orders … As for the local police, you’re ignoring them completely … But I’ll tell you this: one more crime, just one, and we’ll have a catastrophe on our hands. People are expecting trouble. Shops that on any other Sunday stay open till nine at night have already closed their shutters … That idiotic piece in the Brest Beacon terrified the public …’

  The mayor, who had not taken his bowler off his head, now pulled it down farther as he left, saying, ‘I’ll thank you to keep me informed, inspector … And I remind you that whatever happens now is your responsibility.’

  ‘A beer, Emma!’ Maigret snapped.

  There was no way to keep the reporters from descending on the Admiral Hotel, or from installing themselves in the café, telephoning and filling the place with their noisy commotion. They demanded ink, paper. They interrogated Emma, whose poor face looked constantly alarmed.

  Outside, the night was dark, with a beam of moonlight that heightened the melodrama of the cloudy sky instead of brightening it. And there was the mud, which clung to every shoe, since paved streets were still unknown in Concarneau.

  ‘Did Le Pommeret tell you he was coming back?’ Maigret suddenly asked Michoux.

  ‘Yes. He went home for dinner.’

  ‘His address?’ asked a reporter who had nothing else to do.

  The doctor gave it to him, as the inspector shrugged and pulled Leroy off into a corner.

  ‘Did you get the original manuscript of this morning’s article?’

  ‘I just got it. It’s in my room … The handwriting is disguised. It must have come from someone who thought they’d know his writing.’

  ‘No postmark?’

  ‘No. The envelope was dropped in the newspaper’s box. It says “Extremely Urgent” on it …’

  ‘Which means that at eight this morning, at the latest, someone knew about Jean Servières’ disappearance, knew that the car was, or would be, abandoned near the Saint-Jacques River, and that there would be bloodstains on the seat … And that same someone also knew that we’d discover the tracks of an unknown man with big feet …’

  ‘It’s amazing!’ sighed Leroy. ‘But about those fingerprints – I wired them off to Quai des Orfèvres. They’ve already checked the files and called me back. The prints don’t match those of any known offender.’

  There was no doubt about it: the tension was getting to Leroy. But the person most thoroughly infected, so to speak, by that virus was Ernest Michoux, who looked even more colourless in contrast to the newspapermen’s sporty clothes, easygoing manner and self-assurance.

  He had no idea what to do with himself. Maigret asked him: ‘Aren’t you going to bed?’

  ‘Not yet … I never fall asleep before one in the morning …’ He forced a feeble smile, which showed two gold teeth. ‘Frankly, what do you think?’

  The illuminated clock in the Old Town tolled ten. The inspector was called to the telephone. It was the mayor.

  ‘Still nothing?’ It sounded as if he, too, was expecting trouble.

  But, actually, wasn’t Maigret expecting trouble himself? Frowning, he went out to visit the yellow dog. The animal had dozed off; now, without alarm, he opened one eye to watch Maigret approach. The inspector stroked his head, pushed a handful of straw beneath his front legs.

  He felt the proprietor come up behind him.

  ‘Do you suppose those newspaper people will be staying long? … Because if they are, I ought to think about supplies. The market opens at six tomorrow morning …’

  For anyone not used to Maigret, it could be unsettling to see his large eyes stare blankly at you, as now, then to hear him mutter something incomprehensible and move on as if you were not worth noticing.

  The reporter from the Petit Parisien returned, shaking his dripping raincoat.

  ‘Is it raining?’ someone asked. ‘What’s new, Groslin?’

  The young man’s eyes sparkled as he spoke quietly to his photographer then picked up the telephone.

  ‘Petit Parisien, operator … Press service – urgent! What? You have a direct line to Paris? … Well then, hurry … Hello! Petit Parisien? Mademoiselle Germaine? Give me the copy desk. This is Groslin!’

  His tone was impatient. And he dar
ted a challenging look at the colleagues listening to him. Passing by, Maigret stopped to listen.

  ‘Hello, is that you, Mademoiselle Jeanne? … Rush this through! There’s still time to get the story into a few of the out-of-town runs. The other papers will only be able to get it into their Paris editions. Tell the copy desk to rewrite what I give you; I don’t have time. Here we go.

  ‘The Concarneau Case. Our predictions were correct: another crime … Hello? Yes, crime! A man’s been killed. Is that better?’

  Everyone was silent. Spellbound, the doctor drew close to the reporter as he went on, excited, triumphant.

  ‘First Monsieur Mostaguen, then the newspaperman Jean Servières and now Monsieur Le Pommeret! … Yes, I spelled the name earlier. He’s just been found dead in his room … at home. No wound. His muscles are rigid. All evidence points to poisoning. Wait – end with: “Terror reigns”… Yes! Rush this to the managing editor … I’ll call back in a while to dictate a piece for the Paris edition, but the information has to get to the out-of-town desks now.’

  He hung up, mopped his face, and threw a jubilant look around the room.

  The telephone was ringing again. ‘Hello. Inspector? We’ve been trying to get through to you for a quarter of an hour. I’m calling from Monsieur Le Pommeret’s house … Hurry! He’s dead!’ And the voice repeated, in a wail, ‘Dead!’

  Maigret looked around. Empty glasses stood on almost every table. Emma, her face drained, followed his eyes.

  ‘Nobody touch a single glass or bottle!’ he ordered. ‘You hear me, Leroy? Don’t leave here.’

  Sweat dripping from his brow, the doctor snatched off his scarf; at his skinny neck, his shirt was fastened by a toggle stud.

  By the time Maigret reached Le Pommeret’s apartment, a doctor from next door had already made the initial examination.

  A woman of about fifty was there. She was the owner of the building, the person who had telephoned.