Maigret Enjoys Himself Page 5

  The young doctor was silent, his brow creased in a frown.

  ‘Yes and no. I never went to see her personally. But sometimes, when I was around at Boulevard Haussmann, Jave was called away to see a patient urgently.’

  ‘And on those occasions, she never tried to confide in you?’

  ‘No, not what you would call “confide”.’

  ‘To speak about her life?’

  ‘In the way everyone talks about their past, their childhood.’

  ‘So you became good friends?’

  ‘If that’s how you want to put it.’

  ‘She never visited you here, in your lodgings?’

  Another silence.

  ‘Why are you asking me this?’

  ‘I’ll be straight with you. I showed Éveline Jave’s photo to your concierge, and she claimed that she had seen her go up to visit you twice, the last time six weeks ago.’

  ‘The concierge is lying, or has mistaken her for someone else.’

  At the adjoining table the girl was saying:

  ‘Who do you believe? The concierge or the doctor?’

  They were reading at the same speed. Her boyfriend replied:

  ‘Concierges are all cows. But the doctor seems a bit thrown.’

  ‘I told you it was a love affair ...’

  Madame Maigret, who had finished the no doubt shorter article in the other paper, had laid it on her lap and was dreamily watching the tourists come and go.

  Maigret was forgetting his role at the Police Judiciaire, the profession he had exercised his entire life, and was surprised to find himself reading the paper like a normal man in the street. Suddenly he made a little discovery, which delighted him.

  As a rule, those moralistic types who take it upon themselves to lecture other people claim that there is something unhealthy, perverse even, in the desire of certain readers to lap up tales of crimes and disasters.

  Without having thought that much about it, Maigret, even up to the previous day, would have tended to be of the same opinion.

  He now suddenly realized that it wasn’t so clear-cut, and the remarks of the girl at the adjoining table had gone some way towards changing his mind.

  Didn’t readers devour just as avidly tales of heroic or exceptional acts? Has there ever been such a large or excited turnout as the one on the Grands Boulevards, in the middle of the night to boot, to greet Charles Lindbergh?

  Weren’t people just fascinated to learn what human beings were capable of, whether for good or bad?

  Didn’t the curiosity of the girl sitting next to him stem from a desire to know, as a novice in love, what the limits of love are?

  She was hoping that the newspaper, and the course of the inquiry into the death of the woman on Boulevard Haussmann, would show her this.

  Lassagne, extracting maximum mileage from his exclusive interview, continued:

  We then asked him:

  ‘Do you have many female visitors, Monsieur Négrel?’

  ‘Previously, I received one or two, yes.’

  ‘What do you mean by “previously”?’

  Throughout our whole conversation he smoked one cigarette after another, stubbing them out on the sill of the open window.

  ‘A year ago I got engaged. The police know this. They have no doubt already questioned the girl, so there is no point in being secretive about it.’

  ‘May we know her name?’

  ‘They will no doubt tell you at Quai des Orfèvres. I don’t see it as my role.’

  ‘Does the girl live with her parents?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does she work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is she from a respectable family?’

  ‘Her father is a well-known lawyer.’

  ‘And she came to see you here?’

  Silence.

  ‘I’m now going to be even more indiscreet, doctor, and I ask you to forgive me. Have you at any point been Madame Jave’s lover?’

  ‘I’ve already been asked that question.’

  ‘And what did you reply?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you ever been in love with her?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Or she with you?’

  ‘She has never done or said anything that would give me that impression.’

  ‘Did you see her last Saturday?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you see Jave?’

  ‘Neither him nor her. I saw five patients that afternoon, and their records were all found in the office. I left at five thirty, having said goodbye to Josépha and asked her to close all the windows.’

  ‘Who had the idea of you acting as locum this summer?’

  ‘Doctor Jave.’

  ‘How did he manage in previous years?’

  ‘He employed one of my colleagues, Doctor Brisson, who started a practice in Amiens last winter and so is no longer available.’

  ‘One last question. Do you think Josépha is especially devoted to her employers?’

  ‘I haven’t really thought about it all that much.’

  ‘You’ve recently been living alongside her for several weeks. You have had frequent contacts with her. Is she the sort of woman who would bear false witness to protect one or other of her employers?’

  ‘I can only repeat: I have no idea.’

  Lassagne concluded:

  And so we took our leave of this man whose honour, future and even life are now at stake. Guilty or innocent, he knows the weight of words and the threats which weigh down on him. He seemed to us determined to defend himself, calmly, without becoming impassioned or angry, and the final look he gave us from the top of the staircase was full of bitterness.

  ‘This is what I think happened,’ said the girl on the adjoining table. ‘They were lovers, her and the young doctor. The concierge has no reason to lie, and I’m sure that she really did recognize her. Her husband is older than her. He treated her like a little girl, and women don’t like that. Négrel, on the other hand, is a good-looking boy, with those gentle eyes ...’

  Maigret smiled through his pipe. Where did the ‘gentle eyes’ come from? Was it because the article mentioned thick eyebrows?

  ‘I’m quite sure he is in love. Reading his replies, you get the feeling he’s holding something back. And look at how he keeps stubbing out his cigarettes on the window-sill.’

  ‘That’s irrelevant.’

  ‘It shows that he is churning inside but is forcing himself to appear calm. She was obliged to go to Cannes with her husband and daughter. I bet she was the one who suggested him as a locum. That way, with Négrel in Boulevard Haussmann part of the time, there was still a connection between them.’

  ‘You have a vivid imagination.’

  Maigret was starting to think that this couple weren’t made for each other. The boy was blond and came across as quite serious. The girl seemed to wrap him up with her supple body as she clung to him, and this was causing him embarrassment, from the apologetic look he addressed to the people around them.

  ‘Don’t talk so loud.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything bad. After a month apart she couldn’t stand it any more, so she took the plane with the intention of catching an evening flight back to Cannes. She probably told her husband she was off to visit a friend on the Côte. He was suspicious, so he followed her.

  ‘That afternoon he caught them together in the bedroom behind the consulting room. He let Négrel go. It was his wife that he blamed. He hit her. She passed out. Then he decided to do away with her, so he gave her an injection.’

  ‘Why did he put her in the cupboard if it was a crime of passion?’

  Madame Maigret, who was listening too, exchanged a glance with her husband. It was curious, in this fairground atmosphere, to listen to such light-hearted, even playful chat about a tragedy. The people involved, in the girl’s version, lost their humanity, their tragic reality, and became trite characters in a trashy novel.

  And yet, what she was saying m
ight well be the truth. Her hypothesis, from what Maigret knew of the case, was just as plausible as any other.

  ‘Don’t you see? By putting her in the cupboard and returning to Cannes, then making out he had never gone to Paris, he was putting Négrel in the frame as the murderer. The proof of that is that he is still the main suspect.’

  ‘They’re both suspects.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I bet the police let them go to watch them and wait until one of them made a false move.’

  That wasn’t so stupid either. Basically, the general public is much less stupid than is often thought.

  Poor Janvier was faced with a dilemma which policemen don’t encounter very often. Normally you assume that a suspect is guilty, and the question is whether it is better to charge him or let him go while waiting to find more conclusive evidence.

  In the case of just a single possible guilty party Coméliau wouldn’t have hesitated: he would have charged him.

  But with two? They couldn’t both have killed Éveline Jave. So one of the doctors must be innocent. To keep them both in custody would implicitly mean depriving an innocent man of his liberty.

  Even Coméliau could grasp that and so he had resigned himself to letting them both go free.

  Who would be on surveillance duty in the street next to the building where Négrel lived while Lassagne was conducting his interview? Lapointe? Gianni?

  There would be someone there, just as there would be a police officer on duty in Boulevard Haussmann.

  One of the two doctors had agreed to meet the press, choosing the newspaper with the highest circulation.

  The other was keeping his counsel and was locked away in his apartment. Lassagne went on to say:

  We had no luck in arranging an interview with Doctor Jave. Since leaving the Préfecture de Police and returning to Boulevard Haussmann he has seen no one, apart from Josépha. He must have taken his telephone off the hook, because every time we rang we got an engaged tone.

  ‘Having another?’ Madame Maigret asked when she saw her husband summoning a waiter.

  Yes, he was having another glass of vin gris. He was thirsty. But more than that, he didn’t want to leave.

  ‘So what do you think about it?’ she asked in a soft voice.

  He simply shrugged his shoulders. His usual reply to that question was to say that he never thought, which was more or less the truth. He was starting now to get a clearer picture of two of the protagonists: Éveline Jave and Doctor Négrel. They were no longer merely names, Éveline in particular had come more to life since he had seen her photo, and in Janvier’s shoes he would have made a beeline for Concarneau.

  It didn’t hold the key to the drama. Nevertheless, it was the place where the young woman had spent most of her life, and he would have liked to know more about her.

  Had she had a convent education? He would have sworn to it, from the way she held herself and gazed at the camera. He imagined a house devoid of women, a grey house no doubt, probably smelling of fish, with a father and brother with no interest in anything but business.

  How did she adapt to life in Paris? And whenever she hosted a dinner or a party, did she continue to feel awkward and out of place?

  Négrel was from the provinces too, despite his matinée idol looks. He was a Protestant from Nîmes. When he had qualified he hadn’t set up a practice but become his professor’s assistant.

  Lassagne had managed to get him to admit that he had formerly entertained a number of women in his lodgings in Rue des Saints-Pères, and Maigret would have bet that they were easy women from Saint-Germain-des-Prés. He would even have bet that these were short visits, and that none of them spent the night in the young doctor’s bed.

  Now he had been engaged for a year. Maigret was dying to ring Janvier to find out the young lady’s name. The daughter of a well-known lawyer. And she came to his place. That had the makings of a scandal.

  The young lovers went off arm in arm, leaving their newspaper behind on the café table, and headed off towards the Sacré-Cœur. As they passed, the girl gave Maigret’s hat an amused look, even though there was nothing the slightest bit ridiculous about it. It was true that she wasn’t wearing a hat herself, and her hair was cut short like that of a Roman emperor.

  ‘What do they say in your paper?’

  ‘Probably the same as in yours.’

  He opened it mechanically. It too had a photograph on the front page – not Éveline Jave, this time, but her brother, Yves Le Guérec, leaning on the bar of the Hôtel Scribe.

  He didn’t much resemble his sister. He was a broad, thick-set young man with a bony face and crew-cut hair which was probably red.

  Unable to reach Négrel or Jave, it was he whom little Lassagne’s rival had gone to interview.

  Yves Le Guérec, they learned, was married with two children and had built himself a villa three kilometres from Concarneau. He had taken over the management of the canning plant after his father had died.

  ‘My sister has never come back since she got married. I don’t know why. Probably because her husband wanted to take her away from her family.’

  ‘You haven’t seen her since?’

  ‘Occasionally, when I was up in Paris, I’d drop in to visit her. Once I took my wife and children to Boulevard Haussmann, but I got the impression we weren’t exactly welcome.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘We’re simple folk. We don’t frequent the same circles as Doctor Jave ...’

  ‘Didn’t he set himself up with your sister’s dowry?’

  ‘When he got married he was penniless. In fact, he had debts. My father paid them off, and he paid for everything at Boulevard Haussmann too.’

  ‘You don’t like your brother-in-law?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Let’s just say we’re not cut of the same cloth. Or rather, that’s what he’d like you to believe, since his mother was nothing more than a schoolteacher ...’

  You could sense old grudges rising to the surface here. They lived in two separate worlds. The Le Guérecs, in spite of their wealth, continued to lead a plain, simple existence, while Jave, who had come into contact with metropolitan life, had changed.

  But it was the sardine canners who footed the bills.

  ‘My sister inherited half of the shares in the factory, and she receives a tidy sum each year, believe me.’

  ‘Was she married under the convention of common assets?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me too. But it’s not the same. My wife is the daughter of a ship-owner, and ship-owners are of the same sort as us.’

  ‘Do you think she was murdered?’

  ‘Do you think Éveline could have injected herself then stuffed herself, folded in two, into a cupboard to die, having locked the door? Where is the key? Where are her clothes?’

  ‘Who do you think killed her?’

  Le Guérec made as if to speak but changed his mind.

  ‘I don’t want to be sued for slander. The facts speak for themselves, don’t they? And those who make out that my sister had a lover are lying. She wasn’t capable of that. She wasn’t the type. She was afraid of men. When she was a girl and we went to a dance, she sat in the corner and would only agree to dance with me. Look at this photo. I can remember her searching everywhere for a swimming-costume that revealed next to nothing. She took it to an extreme.’

  ‘Did she write to you often?’

  ‘On my birthday, and those of my wife and children, as well as the New Year.’

  ‘Did she know she was ill?’

  ‘She always knew she wouldn’t make old bones, but she was resigned to it.’

  ‘Was she religious?’

  ‘At home she was very religious and went to mass every morning. Later I discovered that her husband had rubbed off on her, and she was no longer practising.’

  ‘Do you think she was unhappy?’

  ‘I’m sure she was.’

>   ‘What do you base that on?’

  ‘You just get a feeling. The way she always said with a vague smile: “Don’t forget to come and see me whenever you’re in Paris. And tell the children their aunt is thinking of them ...” ’

  And yet, she was naked when they found her body in the cupboard. Had her murderer undressed her after the event?

  Again, it was an unlikely theory, especially as it is really quite difficult to undress a dead body.

  Why undress her anyway?

  What was Jave doing, alone with Josépha in the apartment in Boulevard Haussmann?

  What answers had he given to Janvier and the examining magistrate concerning his dash back to Paris?

  The fact that Coméliau hadn’t put him under arrest meant there must be some serious doubts, and it was almost certain that the two suspects were more or less equally under suspicion.

  Now Maigret wanted to find out more about Philippe Jave and his personal life. Did he have a mistress, a second household? Or was he indeed the worldly but austere doctor that most people saw him as?

  ‘What shall we do?’ asked Madame Maigret, as her husband was summoning the waiter to pay for their drinks.

  He didn’t know. It didn’t really matter, and that was the most wonderful thing about it.

  ‘Let’s start by going down the Saint-Pierre stairs ...’

  They would then saunter along Boulevard Roche­chouart. After that they could go down into Rue des Martyrs, for example, where he liked the teeming crowds. He also liked the Faubourg Montmartre.

  Having nothing to do meant he could see Paris in a new light, and he wasn’t going to waste a moment of it.

  ‘I must phone Pardon this evening.’

  ‘You’re not sick, are you?’

  ‘No. He might have some new information about Doctor Jave.’

  ‘Are you worried about that?’

  He wasn’t bothered at all. He thought about it a lot, of course, but it was just an ornamentation, decorating his walks around Paris.

  ‘Tomorrow morning I might have a wander round Rue des Saints-Pères.’

  That was risky, as there weren’t many passers-by there, and he might bump into one of his inspectors.

  ‘I’m thinking about going to see the sea at Concarneau.’