The Yellow Dog Read online

  It was a pretty house of grey stone, facing the sea. Every twenty seconds, the glowing brush of the lighthouse beacon set the windows on fire. There was a balcony with a flagstaff and a shield bearing the Danish coat of arms.

  Outside, five people watched wordlessly as the inspector went in.

  The body lay on the reddish carpet of a studio crowded with worthless knick-knacks. On the walls were publicity shots of actresses, framed pictures clipped from sexy magazines and a few signed photos of women.

  Le Pommeret’s shirt was pulled out of his trousers, his shoes were still crusted with mud.

  ‘Strychnine,’ said the doctor. ‘At least so far I’d swear to that. Look at his eyes. And notice especially how rigid the body is. The death throes took over half an hour. Maybe more …’

  ‘Where were you?’ Maigret asked the landlady.

  ‘Downstairs. I sub-let the whole second floor to Monsieur Le Pommeret, and he took his meals at my place … He came home for dinner around eight o’clock. He ate almost nothing. I remember he said there was something wrong with the electricity, but the lights seemed perfectly normal to me. He said he’d be going out again, but that first he’d go up and take an aspirin, because his head felt heavy …’

  The inspector looked questioningly at the doctor.

  ‘That’s it! The early symptoms.’

  ‘Which appear how long after absorbing the poison?’

  ‘That depends on the dose and on the person’s constitution. Sometimes half an hour, sometimes two hours.’

  ‘And death?’

  ‘Doesn’t come until after general paralysis sets in. But there is local paralysis first. So he probably tried to call for help … He would have been lying on this couch …’

  The couch that had earned Le Pommeret’s place the name House of Depravity! Pornographic prints crowded the walls around the couch. A night light gave off a rosy glow.

  ‘He’d have gone into convulsions. Like an attack of delirium tremens … He died on the floor.’

  Maigret walked to the door as a photographer started to come in and slammed it in the man’s face.

  ‘Le Pommeret left the Admiral a little after seven o’clock,’ Maigret calculated. ‘He’d had a brandy-and-water … A quarter of an hour later, he drank and ate something here … From what you say about the way strychnine works, it’s just as possible he was poisoned back there as here …’

  Abruptly, he went downstairs, where the landlady was crying, with three of her neighbours around her.

  ‘The dishes, the glasses from dinner?’

  It took her a moment to understand what Maigret wanted. By the time she replied, he had already looked into the kitchen and seen a basin of warm water, clean plates and glasses laid out to the right, dirty to the left.

  ‘I was just washing up when …’

  A local policeman arrived.

  ‘Watch the house,’ Maigret told him. ‘Put everyone out except the landlady … and no reporters, no photographers! Nobody is to touch a glass or a plate.’

  It was 500 metres, through the downpour, to the hotel. The town was dark except for two or three distant lighted windows. Then on the square, at the corner by the quay, the Admiral Hotel’s three square windows shone out, though their green panes made the place look like a huge aquarium.

  As Maigret drew near, he heard voices, the telephone ringing, and then the roar of a car starting up.

  ‘Where are you heading?’ he asked the reporter in it.

  ‘The phone is tied up. I’m going to look for another one. In ten minutes it’ll be too late to make my Paris edition.’

  Standing in the café, Leroy looked like a teacher monitoring prep. Men were writing without pause. The travelling salesman watched, bewildered but excited by a scene that was entirely new to him.

  Glasses still stood on the tables – stemware for aperitifs, beer mugs slick with foam, small liqueur glasses.

  ‘When did you last clear the tables?’

  Emma thought back. ‘I can’t say exactly. I picked up some glasses as I went by. Others are left from this afternoon.’

  ‘What about Monsieur Le Pommeret’s?’

  ‘What did he drink, Dr Michoux?’ she asked.

  It was Maigret who answered: ‘A brandy-and-water.’

  She looked at the saucers, one after another, checking the prices on them. ‘This one says six francs … But I served one of those men a whisky, and that’s the same price … Maybe that glass over there? … Maybe not …’

  The photographer, sticking to business, was taking pictures of the glassware spread on the marble tabletops.

  ‘Go and get the pharmacist,’ the inspector ordered Leroy.

  And from then on it was a long night of glasses and plates. Some were brought from the vice-consul of Denmark’s house. The reporters made themselves at home in the pharmacist’s laboratory, and one of them, a former medical student, even helped out with the analyses.

  The mayor, by telephone, merely remarked sharply: ‘Entirely your responsibility.’

  The proprietor suddenly appeared and asked, ‘What’s become of the dog?’

  The place where he had been lying on straw was empty. The yellow dog was incapable of walking, or even crawling, because of the cast immobilizing his hindquarters, but he had vanished.

  The glasses revealed nothing.

  ‘Monsieur Le Pommeret’s may have been washed already … I can’t tell in all this commotion!’ said Emma.

  At his landlady’s, too, half the dishes had already been washed in warm water.

  Ernest Michoux, his face ashen, was more disturbed over the dog’s disappearance. ‘Someone came through the courtyard and took him! There’s a way through to the quay, a kind of alleyway … That gate has to be sealed, inspector! Or else … To think that someone got in without anybody knowing! And then left with that animal in his arms!’

  It looked as if the doctor didn’t dare move from his corner, as if he was keeping as far as possible from the doors.

  5. The Man at Cabélou

  It was eight in the morning. Maigret, who hadn’t gone to bed, had taken a bath and was now shaving at a mirror dangling from the window latch.

  It had turned colder, and the rain was mixed with sleet. A reporter was waiting downstairs for the Paris newspapers. The 7.30 train had sounded its whistle, and soon the newsboys would arrive with the latest sensational issues.

  Below the inspector’s window, the square overflowed with the weekly market. Yet the usual liveliness of a market was missing: people talked in low voices; farmers looked uneasy.

  In the open square stood some fifty stalls, piled with butter, eggs, vegetables, pairs of braces, silk stockings. To the right, carts of all kinds were lined up. And the whole scene was dominated by the wing-like movement of the broad white-lace headdresses of the local women.

  Maigret didn’t notice that something was happening until a part of the market scene took on a different shape; a group had gathered to stare in the same direction. Because his window was closed he heard only a jumbled murmur.

  He looked farther off. On the quay, a few fishermen had been loading empty baskets and nets on to their boats. Suddenly they had stopped, and now made way for two local policemen, who were leading a prisoner towards the town hall.

  One of the policemen was young, still beardless. His face radiated eager innocence. The other had a large mahogany-coloured moustache, and his heavy eyebrows gave him an almost ferocious look.

  In the market, all chatter had stopped, as the crowd watched the three men approach. Some pointed to the handcuffs that bound the prisoner’s wrists to those of his captors.

  The man was a colossus! His forwards pitch made his shoulders look even broader. As he dragged his feet through the mud, he seemed to be towing the officers along in his wake.

  He was wearing an unprepossessing old j
acket, and his bare head bristled with thick hair, short and dark.

  The waiting reporter darted up the hotel stairs, rattled a door and shouted to his sleeping photographer: ‘Benoît! Benoît! Quick, get up! You’ll miss a fantastic shot!’

  He didn’t know how right he was. For as Maigret, his eyes never leaving the square, wiped the last traces of shaving soap from his cheeks and reached for his jacket, a truly extraordinary thing happened.

  The crowd had quickly closed around the policemen and their prisoner. Suddenly, the captive, who must have been waiting for the chance, gave a violent jerk of his wrists.

  The inspector saw the puny ends of chain dangling from the policemen’s hands. The man plunged through the crowd. A woman was sent sprawling. People scattered. Before anyone had recovered from the surprise, the prisoner had darted into an alleyway, twenty metres from the Admiral, that ran alongside the vacant house from which the bullet had spat forth on Friday.

  The younger policeman nearly fired, but hesitated, then chased after him, with his gun at the ready. Maigret was afraid there might be an accident. A canopy on wooden struts gave way under the pressure of the escaping throng and its canvas roof collapsed on to the blocks of butter.

  The young officer was brave, and he sprinted into the alley alone.

  Since Maigret knew the neighbourhood now, he finished dressing without haste. It would take a miracle to catch the fellow. The narrow passage, two metres wide, had two sharp dog-legs. Twenty houses faced on to either the quay or the square and had their back entries on the alley. There were storage sheds as well, a marine supply yard, a cannery warehouse, a whole tangle of odd buildings, nooks and crannies, and roofs within easy reach. They would all make pursuit almost impossible.

  The crowd was keeping its distance now. Red with anger, the woman who had been knocked down was shaking her fist in all directions as tears trickled down her chin.

  The photographer darted from the hotel, a trenchcoat over his pyjamas, his feet bare.

  Half an hour later, just after the police lieutenant had sent his men to search the neighbouring houses, the mayor arrived. He found Maigret settled in the café with the young policeman, busily devouring toast. The town’s leading magistrate was shaking with indignation.

  ‘I warned you, inspector, that I would hold you responsible for … for … But you don’t seem to care! I’m going to send a telegram to the minister of the interior, to inform him of … of … and to ask him … Have you any idea what’s happening out there? People are fleeing their homes. A helpless old man is howling with fear because he’s stuck on the second floor. People think they’re seeing the criminal everywhere!’

  Maigret turned and saw Ernest Michoux huddling close behind him like a frightened child, trying to create as few ripples in the air as a ghost.

  ‘You’ll notice that it was the local police – just ordinary policemen – who arrested him, whereas …’

  ‘You still insist that I make an arrest?’

  ‘What do you mean? Are you claiming you can lay hands on the fugitive?’

  ‘You asked me yesterday to make an arrest, any arrest …’

  The reporters were outside, helping the police in their search. The café was practically empty. There had been no time to clean it up, though, and an acrid odour of stale tobacco smoke hung in the air. The floor was covered with cigarette butts, spittle, sawdust and broken glass.

  The inspector drew a blank arrest warrant from his wallet. ‘Say the word, Monsieur le Maire, and I’ll—’

  ‘I’d be curious to know whom you would arrest!’

  ‘Emma, pen and ink, please.’

  Maigret was drawing short puffs on his pipe. He heard the mayor mutter, just loud enough to be heard, ‘Bluffing!’

  Unflustered, he wrote, in his usual large angular strokes: ‘Ernest Michoux, Director, White Sands Property Company.’

  The scene was more comic than tragic. The mayor read the warrant upside down. Maigret said, ‘There you are! Since you insist, I’m arresting the doctor …’

  Michoux looked at the two of them, gave the sickly smile of a man who cannot decide how to take a joke. But it was Emma the inspector was watching – Emma, who walked towards the till and suddenly turned around, less pale than usual and unable to disguise a surge of joy.

  ‘I suppose, inspector, that you realize the gravity of—’

  ‘It’s my trade, Monsieur le Maire.’

  ‘And the best you can do, after what’s happened, is arrest a friend of mine – an associate, rather – and one of Concarneau’s distinguished citizens?’

  ‘Have you got a comfortable jail?’

  During this conversation, Michoux seemed to be having a problem swallowing.

  ‘Aside from the police station, in the town hall, there’s only the police barracks, in the Old Town …’

  Leroy had just come in. He gasped when Maigret said to him, in a perfectly natural voice: ‘Now, Leroy, be so good as to escort the doctor to the police barracks. Discreetly. No need to handcuff him … Lock him up, and make sure he has everything he needs.’

  ‘It’s utter madness!’ babbled the doctor. ‘I don’t understand what’s going on … I … It’s unheard of … It’s an outrage!’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Maigret muttered. Turning to the mayor, he said: ‘I have no objection to continuing the search for your vagrant – that keeps the public busy. It might even be useful. But don’t attach too much importance to his capture … Reassure people.’

  ‘You’re aware that when the police caught him this morning they found a flick knife on him?’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  Maigret was growing impatient. Standing up, he slipped on his heavy overcoat, turned up its velvet collar and brushed his bowler hat on his sleeve.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Monsieur le Maire. I’ll keep you informed. Another word of advice: try to keep people from talking too much to the reporters. When it comes right down to it, there’s barely enough in all this to shake a stick at … Are you coming?’ This question was addressed to the young policeman, who glanced at the mayor as if to say, ‘Excuse me, but I have to go along with him.’

  Leroy was circling the doctor like a man utterly perplexed by an unwieldy bundle.

  Maigret tapped Emma on the cheek as he passed, and then crossed the square, unruffled by the curious stares. ‘This way?’

  ‘Yes. We have to go round the harbour. It should take half an hour.’

  The fishermen were less interested than the townsfolk in the drama going on around the Admiral café. A dozen boats were making the most of the lull in the storm and sculling out to the harbour mouth to pick up the wind.

  The policeman kept looking at Maigret like a pupil eager to please his teacher. ‘You know, the mayor played cards with the doctor at least twice a week. This must have given him a shock.’

  ‘What are people saying?’

  ‘That depends. Ordinary folks – workers, fishermen – aren’t too upset … In a way, they’re even kind of glad about what’s happening. The doctor, Monsieur Le Pommeret and Monsieur Servières aren’t very well thought of around here. Of course, they’re important people, and nobody would dare say anything to them … Still, they took advantage, corrupting the girls from the canning plant … And in the summer it was worse, with their Parisian friends. They were always drinking, making a racket in the streets at two in the morning, as if the town belonged to them. We got a lot of complaints … Especially about Monsieur Le Pommeret, who couldn’t see anything in a skirt without getting carried away … It’s sad to say, but things are slow at the cannery. There’s a lot of unemployment. So, if a man has a little money … all those girls …’

  ‘Well, in that case, who’s upset?’

  ‘The middle class. And the businessmen who rubbed shoulders with that bunch at the Admiral café … That was like the centre o
f town, you know. Even the mayor went there …’

  The man was flattered by Maigret’s attention.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘We’ve just left town. From here on, the coast is pretty much deserted … just rocks, pine woods and a few summer houses used by people from Paris … It’s what we call Cabélou Point.’

  ‘What made you think of nosing around out here?’

  ‘When you told me and my partner to look for a drifter who might be the owner of the yellow dog, we first searched the old boats in the inner harbour. Now and then we find a tramp there. Last year, a cutter burned up because someone made a fire to get warm and forgot to put it out.’

  ‘Find anything?’

  ‘Nothing. It was my partner who thought of the old watchtower at Cabélou … We’re just coming to it – that square stone structure on the last rocky point. It dates from the same time as the Old Town fortifications. Come this way … watch out for the muck … A very long time ago, a caretaker lived here, a kind of watchman, who signalled when boats passed. From it, you can see really far. It overlooks the Glénan Islands channel, the only opening to the sea. But it hasn’t been manned for maybe fifty years.’

  Maigret stepped through an opening whose door had vanished and entered a space with a beaten-earth floor. On the ocean side, narrow slits gave a view out over the water. On the other side was a single window, without panes or a frame. On the stone walls were inscriptions cut by knifepoint; on the ground were dirty papers and all kinds of rubbish.

  ‘For nearly fifteen years, a man lived here, all alone. Weak in the head – sort of a child of nature. He slept over in that corner. Didn’t mind the cold or the damp, or even the storms that flung spray in through the slits. He was a local curiosity. In the summer, the Parisians would come to look at him, give him coins. A postcard pedlar took a picture of him and sold it at the entrance … The man finally died, during the War. And no one ever bothered to clean the place up … Yesterday, my partner thought that if someone was hiding out around here, this might be the spot.’

  Maigret started up the narrow stone stairway cut right into the wall and reached the lookout, a granite tower open on all four sides, giving a view of the whole area.