Maigret's Pickpocket Read online

  ‘To a cell?’

  ‘No, to my office, where you will oblige me by waiting quietly.’

  ‘And then? What’ll happen next?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘What do you hope to discover?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I know even less about this than you, because I didn’t look closely at her body and I haven’t seen the gun.’

  This entire conversation was accompanied by the sounds of glasses and forks, the murmur of voices, the coming and going of the waiter, and the tinny bell on the cash register.

  The sun was lighting the other side of the street, where the shadows of passers-by were short and squat. Cars, taxis, buses drove past constantly, doors slammed.

  As they left the restaurant, both men hesitated. In their corner of the bistro, they had for a long while been cut off from other people, from daily life, all the familiar sounds, voices and images.

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  Ricain was asking the same question again, not daring to look at Maigret.

  ‘This isn’t the moment to go into believing or not believing. Look! My men have arrived.’

  He could see in Rue Saint-Charles one of the black cars belonging to the Police Judiciaire, as well as the van of the Police Records department, and he recognized Lapointe in the little group that stood talking on the pavement. The sturdy Torrence was there as well, and it was to him that Maigret passed his companion.

  ‘Take him to headquarters. Install him in my office, and stay with him. Don’t be surprised if he drops off to sleep – he hasn’t had a wink for two nights.’

  Shortly after two o’clock, a van drove up from the Paris city sanitation service, since Moers and his men did not have the necessary equipment.

  By then, in the courtyard, several groups of men were waiting outside the front doors of the ground-floor apartments, while bystanders, kept at some distance by uniformed police, were observing the scene with curiosity.

  In one group, the deputy prosecutor Dréville and the examining magistrate Camus were chatting to Piget, the chief of police in the fifteenth arrondissement. All of them had come straight from their lunch, which had no doubt been quite copious, and since the disinfection process was taking some time, every now and again they checked their watches.

  The duty pathologist was Doctor Delaplanque, fairly new to the profession, but Maigret liked him and was now asking him a few questions. Delaplanque had not hesitated, despite the smell and the flies, to make an initial examination of the body in the bedroom.

  ‘I’ll be able to tell you more presently. You mentioned a 6.35 pistol, which is a bit surprising, since I’d be inclined to bet the wound came from something bigger.’

  ‘What distance?’

  ‘At first sight, there isn’t a ring of gunpowder round the site of entry. Death was instantaneous or almost so, because the woman lost very little blood. Who is she, by the way?’

  ‘The wife of a young journalist.’

  For all these people, as for Moers and the specialists of the forensic team, this was all in a day’s work, and carried out without any visible emotion. Indeed, one of the men from the city sanitation service had exclaimed on entering the flat:

  ‘Phew, this dame stinks, eh!’

  Some women onlookers had babies in their arms, others, well placed to see everything without stirring, stayed leaning on their window-sills, and comments were passed from one lodging to another.

  ‘Are you sure he isn’t the fat one?’

  ‘No, the fat one, I don’t know who that is.’

  They were referring to Inspector Lourtie. But it was Maigret that the two women were searching for.

  ‘Look, he’s the one smoking a pipe.’

  ‘There are two of them smoking pipes.’

  ‘Not the young one, of course. The other one. Look, he’s going over to those people from the Palais de Justice.’

  Deputy prosecutor Déville was asking Maigret:

  ‘Any idea what this is all about?’

  ‘The dead woman is Sophie Ricain, née Le Gal, aged twenty-two, originally from Concarneau, where her father is a watchmaker.’

  ‘Has he been informed?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll see to it presently.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Yes, for three years, to François Ricain, a young journalist. He does a bit of film work, and is trying to make a career in Paris.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In my office.’

  ‘Is he a suspect?’

  ‘Not at the moment. He’s in no state to answer questions from a magistrate, and he’d just get in the way here.’

  ‘Where was he when the crime was committed?’

  ‘We don’t know the time of the crime yet.’

  ‘Doctor, can you give us a rough idea?’

  ‘No, not yet. Perhaps after the autopsy, if I can find out when the victim ate her last meal and what it consisted of.’

  ‘The neighbours?’

  ‘Plenty of them are watching us, as you can see. I haven’t questioned them yet, but I doubt they’ll have much of interest to tell us. What you need to know is that it’s possible to enter these ground-floor flats without going past the concierge’s lodge, because that’s at the other entrance, on Boulevard de Grenelle.’

  It was a tedious time. They remained waiting. People exchanged meaningless remarks and Lapointe followed his chief about, silently, with the gaze and attitude of a faithful dog.

  The sanitation team were bringing out of the apartment a large flexible tube, painted grey, which they had taken in there a quarter of an hour earlier. Their leader, in white overalls, beckoned the police over.

  ‘Don’t stay too long in the room,’ he warned Maigret, ‘there’s still a lot of formalin in the air.’

  Doctor Delaplanque knelt down by the body and examined it with rather more care than he had the first time.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can take her away.’

  ‘What about you, Maigret?’

  Maigret had seen all there was to see: a huddled body in a flowered silk dressing gown. A red mule was still hanging on to one foot. It was impossible from her position in the room to say what the woman had been doing, or even where exactly she had been, when the bullet hit her.

  As far as he could judge, her face had been unremarkable, but quite pretty. Her toenails were varnished red, but had not been recently cared for, since the varnish was cracked and the nails were not entirely clean.

  Standing alongside his chief, the court clerk was taking notes, as was the secretary of the local police inspector.

  ‘You can bring in the stretcher.’

  They crunched over dead flies. One after another, the people who crowded into the room took out handkerchiefs to pat their eyes, because of the formalin.

  The body was removed and a respectful silence reigned for a few moments in the courtyard. The men from the prosecutor’s office were the first to leave, then Delaplanque, while Moers and his specialists were waiting to start their work.

  ‘We look everywhere, do we, chief?’

  ‘Best to do that. You never know.’

  Perhaps this case was a mystery, or perhaps, on the contrary, it would turn out to be entirely straightforward. That’s how it is at the start of every investigation, or almost.

  Maigret, his eyelids smarting, pulled open the drawer of a chest which contained a clutter of various objects: an old pair of opera glasses, some buttons, a broken pen and some pencils, stills from a film set, sunglasses, bills …

  He would return when the smell had had time to dissipate, but as of now he was well able to register the strange décor of the little apartment. The floor had been varnished black, the walls and ceiling painted bright scarlet. The furniture by contrast was chalky white, which made the whole interior rather unreal. It was almost like a stage set. Nothing seemed solid.

  ‘What do you think of this, Lapointe? Would you like to live in a room like this?’


  ‘It’d give me nightmares.’

  They went out. Some stragglers were still lingering in the courtyard and the police had let them come a little nearer.

  ‘I told you it was that one. I wonder if he’ll be back. Apparently he does all the inquiries himself so perhaps he’ll come over and question us.’

  The speaker, a faded blonde with a baby in her arms, was looking at Maigret with a smile inspired no doubt by a film star.

  ‘I’ll leave Lourtie with you. Here’s the key to the flat. When Moers’ men have finished, lock up and start questioning the neighbours. The crime wasn’t committed last night, if crime it was, but during the night from Wednesday to Thursday.

  ‘Try to find out if the neighbours heard any coming and going. Divide the tenants up between you and Lourtie. Then ask the local shopkeepers. There are a lot of bills in the drawer. You’ll find the addresses there of the tradesmen they used.

  ‘I almost forgot. Can you check if the phone’s working? It seemed to me at midday that it was off the hook.’

  The telephone was working.

  ‘Don’t come back to headquarters, either of you, without calling me first. Good luck.’

  Maigret set off towards Boulevard de Grenelle and went down the steps into the Métro. Half an hour later, he emerged into fresh air and sunshine. He was soon in his office, where François Ricain was meekly waiting while Torrence read a newspaper.

  ‘Aren’t you thirsty?’ he asked Ricain, as he took off his hat and went to open the window a little wider. ‘Nothing to report, Torrence?’

  ‘A newspaperman just phoned.’

  ‘I was surprised they didn’t turn up over there. Their information network in the fifteenth must be inefficient. Lapointe will have them on his back by now.’

  He turned towards Ricain, looked at his hands, and told the inspector:

  ‘Take him up to the lab for the paraffin test, just to be on the safe side. It won’t prove anything, since the crime was committed two days ago, but it’ll avoid any awkward questions.’

  They would know in a quarter of an hour whether there were traces of gunpowder on Ricain’s fingers. Their absence would not indicate absolutely that he had not fired the gun, but it would be a point in his favour.

  ‘Hello … Is that you, my dear? … I’m very sorry … Of course … If I hadn’t been caught up in a case, I’d have been back for lunch … Yes, yes, I ate some steak and chips, with a rather excitable young man. I did tell myself when I went into the restaurant that I’d phone you, but the conversation was non-stop and I confess, it went right out of my head. You’re not cross with me, are you? … No, I don’t know … We’ll have to see.’

  Tonight, he might or might not be home for dinner, he could not yet predict anything. Especially with a man like François Ricain, who changed his mood every few seconds.

  Maigret would have found it difficult to formulate an opinion of him. Intelligent, yes, certainly, and highly so, as far as one could tell from what lay beneath some of his utterances. Yet alongside that, there was a naive, rather childish side to him.

  How could one judge him at the moment? His condition was morally and physically lamentable; he was a bundle of nerves, torn between warring feelings.

  If he had not killed his wife, and if he really had planned to take refuge in Belgium or elsewhere, it pointed to a state of total disorientation, which could not be explained alone by the claustrophobia he had mentioned.

  Presumably he was the one responsible for the strange way the apartment was decorated, its black floor, red walls and ceiling, and those pale, ghost-like pieces of furniture that stood out as if floating in space.

  It gave the impression that the ground you were walking on was not solid, that the walls were going to move in or out, as in a film studio, that the chest of drawers, the sofa-bed, the table and chairs were all artificial, made of papier-mâché.

  And wasn’t he a somewhat artificial being himself? Maigret could just imagine the face of the deputy prosecutor or of Camus, the examining magistrate, if they had read at a stretch all the sentences the young man had uttered, first in the café at La Motte-Picquet, and then in the little local restaurant afterwards.

  Maigret would have liked to have Doctor Pardon’s opinion of him.

  Ricain came back into the office, followed by Torrence.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘I’ve never fired a shot in my life, except at a fairground. I wouldn’t even know where to find the safety catch.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Have you spoken to the examining magistrate?’

  ‘Yes, I saw the examining magistrate and the deputy prosecutor.’

  ‘What did they say? Am I going to be arrested?’

  ‘It must be about the tenth time you’ve said that word. So far, I would have only one reason to arrest you: the theft of my wallet, and I haven’t brought charges.’

  ‘I sent it back to you!’

  ‘Quite true. We’re going to try and get straight some things you’ve told me and others that I don’t know yet. You can go, Torrence. Tell Janvier to come in.’

  Shortly afterwards, Janvier was sitting at one end of the desk, taking a pencil from his pocket.

  ‘Your name is François Ricain, and you’re twenty-five years old. Where were you born?’

  ‘Paris, Rue Caulaincourt.’

  A respectable street, almost provincial in character, behind the Sacré-Coeur.

  ‘Are your parents still alive?’

  ‘My father is. He works for the railways, he’s an engine driver.’

  ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘Just over three and a half years. It would have been four in June. The 17th.’

  ‘So you were twenty-one and your wife was …?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  ‘Was your father already widowed then?’

  ‘My mother died when I was fifteen.’

  ‘And you went on living with your father?’

  ‘For a year or two. When I was seventeen I left home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we didn’t get on.’

  ‘For any particular reason?’

  ‘No … I was bored. He wanted me to get a job with the railways too, but I refused. He thought I was wasting my time reading and studying …’

  ‘Did you get your baccalauréat?’

  ‘No, I left school two years before that.’

  ‘To do what? Where did you live, and on what sort of income?’

  ‘You’re rushing me,’ Ricain complained.

  ‘I’m not rushing you, I’m asking you some elementary questions.’

  ‘Different things at different times. I sold newspapers in the street. Then I was an errand boy for a printer in Rue Montmartre. For a while I shared a room with a friend.’

  ‘Name and address?’

  ‘Bernard Fléchier, he had a bedsit in Rue Coquillière. I’ve lost touch with him now.’

  ‘What was his job?’

  ‘He drove a delivery scooter.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I worked for six months in a stationer’s shop. I was writing stories and took them to newspapers. One of them was accepted and it earned me a hundred francs. The man I met was surprised I was so young …’

  ‘Did he publish any more of your stories?’

  ‘No, the ones after that were turned down.’

  ‘What were you doing when you met your wife, I mean the girl you were going to marry, Sophie Le Gal – that was her name, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I was third assistant on a film that got banned by the censor. It was a war film, made by a group of young people.’

  ‘And Sophie was working?’

  ‘Not regularly. She was an extra. She got the occasional modelling job.’

  ‘Did she live alone?’

  ‘She had a hotel room in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.’

  ‘Was it love at first sight?’

  ‘No. We ended up
sleeping together because after a party we found ourselves in the street at three a.m. She let me go back with her. We stayed together for some months, then, one fine day, we decided to get married.’

  ‘Did her parents approve?’

  ‘They didn’t have much to say about it. She went to Concarneau and came back with a letter from her father allowing us to marry.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I went to see my father too.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He just shrugged his shoulders.’

  ‘He didn’t come to the wedding?’

  ‘No, we just invited some friends, three or four. And in the evening we had a meal all together in Les Halles.’

  ‘Before she met you, did Sophie have anyone else?’

  ‘I wasn’t the first, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘She didn’t live for any length of time before you with a man who might have been sufficiently keen to try and see her again?’

  He seemed to search his memory.

  ‘No. We met some of her past boyfriends, but there hadn’t been any important love affair. You know, in four years, you move around in different groups. We’d be friendly with some people for six months, and then they’d drop out of our lives. Other people would take their place, and we’d meet up now and again. You ask questions as if it was all quite simple. You’re getting my answers written down. If I make a mistake, or leave something out you’ll jump to God only knows what conclusions. It’s not fair …’

  ‘Would you prefer me to question you with a lawyer present?’

  ‘Do I have the right?’

  ‘If you consider that you’re a suspect.’

  ‘What about you, how do you consider me?’

  ‘As a man whose wife has died a violent death. As a young fellow who panicked, stole my wallet, then sent it back to me intact. As an intelligent but not very stable person.’

  ‘If you’d spent the last two nights like I did …’

  ‘We’ll get to that presently. So you did various short-term jobs?’

  ‘It was just to earn a living while I waited …’

  ‘Waited for what?’