Maigret's Dead Man Page 5

  While that was proceeding, fifty other cases were demanding the attention of the inspectors. They came in, went out, phoned, typed up reports … People were kept waiting in the corridors. There was a deal of toing and froing between the Hotel Agency and Vice Squad and between Vice and Records.

  Moers’ voice over the phone:

  ‘Maybe something, sir … A small detail, which is probably not important. I’ve found so little that I’ll bring it to your attention anyway. I took a hair sample, as usual. My analysis revealed traces of lipstick.’

  It was almost laughable, but neither of them was laughing. A woman had kissed Maigret’s dead man on the head, a woman wearing lipstick.

  ‘I can add that it’s a cheap make, and that the woman is probably a brunette, because it’s a dark shade of red …’

  Was it the previous evening that a woman had kissed the man with no name? Did it happen at his place when he had gone home to change his jacket?

  And since he had actually changed, it was because he wasn’t intending to go out again. A man who goes home for just an hour does not bother to put on a different jacket.

  In which case, then, he had been called away unexpectedly … But was it likely that, hunted as he was and sufficiently panicky to go running around Paris waving his arms about and phoning the police all day, he would have gone out after dark?

  A woman kissed his hair. Or else she had bent over him, leaning her face against his cheek. Either way it was a tender gesture.

  Maigret sighed, filled his pipe again and looked at the clock. It was a few minutes after midday.

  Almost exactly the same time as when, on the previous day, the man had walked across Place des Vosges while the fountains played.

  Maigret went through the small communicating door which connected the Police Judiciaire with the Palais de Justice. Lawyers’ robes billowed in the corridors like great black birds.

  ‘Let’s go and see the old baboon!’ sighed Maigret who had never been able to stand Coméliau.

  He knew in advance that the examining magistrate would greet him with some icy comment which in his eyes would be the most stinging rebuke he could think of:

  ‘Ah! I have been waiting for you, Detective Chief Inspector …’

  Though he would have been quite capable of saying, like Louis XIV:

  ‘I almost had to wait …’

  Maigret could not have cared less.

  He had been living with his dead man since half past two that morning.

  3.

  ‘I am delighted, Maigret, to have got you on the phone at long last.’

  ‘Believe me, sir, the pleasure is all mine.’

  Madame Maigret looked up sharply. She always felt uneasy when her husband used that quiet, bland voice. When he used it on her she always cried because she never knew what was coming next.

  ‘I’ve called you at your office five times.’

  ‘And I wasn’t there!’ he sighed, audibly dismayed.

  She raised a finger, warning him to be careful and remember that he was speaking to an examining magistrate who moreover had a brother-in-law who had been a government minister two or three times.

  ‘I’ve only just been told that you were unwell.’

  ‘A little off colour, sir. People always exaggerate these things. A heavy cold. And I wonder now if it really was as heavy as all that!’

  It was perhaps the fact that he was at home, in his pyjamas and wearing his velvety dressing gown, his feet encased in slippers and comfortably settled in his armchair, that put him in such a playful mood.

  ‘What surprises me is that you haven’t let me know who is replacing you.’

  ‘Replacing me where?’

  Coméliau’s voice was curt, cool, deliberately impersonal, whereas Maigret’s became increasingly amenable.

  ‘I’m talking about the Place de la Concorde murder. I assume you haven’t forgotten it?’

  ‘It is constantly in my thoughts. Why, only this minute I was telling my wife …’

  But she made even more emphatic signs ordering him not to involve her in the affair. Their apartment was small and cosy. The furniture in the dining room was all dark oak and dated from the time of Maigret’s marriage. Opposite, through the net curtains, could be seen in large black letters on a white wall: ‘Lhoste & Pépin – Makers of Precision Tools’.

  Every morning and every evening for thirty years, Maigret had been seeing those words, and under them the huge warehouse doors and two or three lorries branded with the same names eternally parked on either side of them, and he was still not sick of the view.

  On the contrary! He liked it. He would let his eyes linger on it, almost lovingly. Then without fail he would raise them to the rear of a distant house, where washing was put out of the windows to dry and a red geranium would appear in one of them as soon as the weather turned warm enough.

  It was probably not the same geranium. He would have sworn, however, that the same flower pot had been there, as he had, for the last thirty years. And during all that time not once had Maigret ever seen anyone lean on the sill and look out or water the plant. Obviously someone lived in that room, but his or her hours could never have coincided with his.

  ‘Are you sure, Monsieur Maigret, that in your absence your subordinates are conducting the inquiry with the necessary zeal?’

  ‘I believe so, Monsieur Coméliau. Indeed, I am certain of it. You cannot imagine how helpful it is, when directing an investigation of this sort, to be in a quiet, overheated room, sitting in an armchair in one’s own home, far from all the usual distractions, with nothing but a phone within easy reach and a pot of herbal tea to hand. I will let you in on a little secret: I’m wondering, if this case had not cropped up, if I would have been feeling unwell at all. Obviously I wouldn’t be ill since it was in Place de la Concorde on the night the body was discovered that I caught cold. Or perhaps it was early that morning, while Dr Paul and I walked along the bank of the river at first light, after the autopsy. But that isn’t what I mean. If it hadn’t been for this investigation, my cold would have been just a cold and I would have ignored it. Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  In his office, Coméliau’s face had probably turned yellow, possibly green, and poor Madame Maigret, who had such respect for rank and hierarchies of all kinds, did not know where to put herself.

  ‘So let’s just say that, that I have much more peace here, at home, with my wife looking after me, to think about the case and manage it. I’m not disturbed by anyone, or hardly anyone …’

  ‘Maigret!’ chided his wife.

  ‘Sh!’

  Coméliau was speaking.

  ‘You think it usual that after three days the man still has not been identified? His picture has been in all the papers. I understand from what you told me that there was a wife.’

  ‘Indeed so, he told me himself.’

  ‘Please let me speak. He had a wife and probably friends. He also had neighbours, a landlord and so on and so forth. People were used to seeing him walking along the street at certain times. But no one so far has come forward to identify him or report his disappearance. Still, not everyone knows how to get to Boulevard Richard-Lenoir.’

  Poor Boulevard Richard-Lenoir! Why on earth should it have such a bad name? Obviously, it led into Place de la Bastille. Equally obviously it was flanked on both sides by narrow, teeming streets. And the area was full of small workshops and warehouses. But the Boulevard itself was wide and even had a grassy central reservation. Admittedly, the grass grew above the Métro line, and here and
there air-vents exhaled warm fumes which smelled of disinfectant, and every couple of minutes when trains trundled by underneath the houses shook in the most curious way. But people were used to it. Many times over the last thirty years, friends and colleagues had found other apartments for him in what they called more ‘vibrant’ parts of town. He would go to see them and mutter:

  ‘It’s very nice, I see that …’

  ‘But what about the view, Maigret?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘The rooms are big and airy …’

  ‘Agreed … It’s perfect … I’d really like living here … But …’

  He would take his time before saying with a sigh and a regretful shake of his head:

  ‘… I’d have to move!’

  It was just hard luck on people who didn’t care for Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. And too bad for Coméliau.

  ‘Tell me, sir, did you ever happen to push a dried pea up your nose?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘A dried pea. I remember we used to play at doing it when I was a boy. Try it. Then look at yourself in a mirror. You’ll be surprised by the result. I’d bet that with a dried pea in one of your nostrils you could walk past people who see you every day without them recognizing you. Nothing alters the cast of a face more. And those who are most accustomed to seeing us are the ones who are the most disconcerted by the smallest change.

  ‘But as you are aware, our man’s face was rearranged much more severely than by a pea up his nose.

  ‘And there’s something else. It’s hard for people to imagine that their next-door neighbour, someone they work with in the office or the waiter who serves them every lunchtime can suddenly become different from what they always are and turn, for example, into a murderer or a corpse. People learn about crime through newspapers and come to think that such things happen in another world, another part of the wood entirely. Not on their street. Not in their apartment block.’

  ‘So, broadly speaking, you don’t think it unusual that no one has identified him yet?’

  ‘I am not unduly surprised. I remember the case of a woman who had drowned, and with her it took six months. And that was in the days of the old morgue before refrigeration came in, and the bodies just had a trickle of cold water running over them from a tap!’

  Madame Maigret sighed, abandoning all thought of trying to shut him up.

  ‘So in a word you are quite happy with the way things stand. A man is killed, and after three days not only is there no trace of the murderer but we don’t know anything about the victim!’

  ‘I know lots of small things about him, sir.’

  ‘So small, it seems, that they aren’t deemed worthy of being passed on to me, even though I am in charge of this investigation.’

  ‘All right, here’s an example. The man was a smart dresser. Though his taste was dubious, he gave much thought to his appearance, as we can tell by his socks and tie. Also, with grey trousers and a gaberdine raincoat he wore black kid shoes and expensively fine socks.’

  ‘Really? How interesting.’

  ‘Very interesting, especially since he was also wearing a white shirt. Now wouldn’t you have thought that a man who liked mauve socks and floral ties would have preferred a coloured shirt, or at least one with stripes or a small pattern? Walk into any bar like the ones he led us to, where he seemed very much at home, and you won’t see many plain white shirts.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Give me a moment. In at least two of those bars – Torrence went back and asked – he ordered a Suze and lemon, as it seems he always did.’

  ‘So we know what kind of aperitif he liked!’

  ‘Have you ever drunk Suze, sir? Gentian bitters? It has an astringent taste and is not very alcoholic. It’s not the kind of aperitif that’s served just anywhere. I also have noticed that people who order Suze are not often the ones who go to cafés for the lift you get from a pre-dinner drink but men who patronize such establishments for professional reasons, like commercial travellers who are obliged to accept lots of free drinks.’

  ‘So you deduce from this that the dead man was a commercial traveller?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Hear me out. Five or six people saw him and we have their statements. None of them could give us a detailed description. Most of them speak of a small-made, ordinary man who waved his arms about. I was forgetting one detail which Moers came up with this morning. He is very conscientious, never satisfied with his work. He goes back and checks without being asked to. Well, he’s discovered that the dead man walked like a duck.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Like a duck! With his feet pointing out, if you prefer.’

  He gestured to Madame Maigret, indicating that she should fill his pipe. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, using his hands to stop her packing the bowl too tightly.

  ‘I was telling you about the various descriptions we have of him. They are vague. Even so, two out of the five had the same impression. “I’m not sure,” said the owner of the Caves du Beaujolais. “I can’t say exactly … But he reminds me of something … But what?” Now he wasn’t a film actor. He wasn’t even an extra. An inspector asked around all the studios. Nor was he a politician or a magistrate …’

  ‘Maigret!’ cried his wife.

  Still talking, he lit his pipe, punctuating his flow with pulls on his pipe.

  ‘Ask yourself, sir, what profession matches up with all these details.’

  ‘I don’t care for charades.’

  ‘When a man is forced to keep to his room, you know, he has plenty of time for reflection. But I’m forgetting the most important thing. Of course, we looked at various spheres of activity. Cycle races and football matches drew blanks. I had all PMU licensees questioned …’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘The Pari-Mutuel-Urbain … You’ve seen cafés where you can put a bet on a horse without having to go to the races. I don’t know why, but I saw my man as the sort who’d hang around PMU bars. But that didn’t turn up anything either …’

  He had the patience of an angel. It was as if he relished spinning this phone call out for as long as he could.

  ‘On the other hand, Lucas had more luck at the races. It took him some time. We’re not talking about a formal identification. The disfigurement of the face remains a problem. And don’t forget either that people aren’t used to seeing dead bodies, only living people, plus the fact that when a man becomes a corpse he changes his appearance greatly … Still, on race tracks, a few people remember him … He wasn’t a habitué of the paddock but of the public enclosures. According to one tipster, he was something of a regular.’

  ‘But all this has still not been enough to reveal his identity?’

  ‘No. But this plus the rest, everything I’ve told you, allows me to say almost for sure that he was in La Limonade …’

  ‘La Limonade?’

  ‘It’s the usual term, sir. It covers waiters, bottle-washers, bartenders and even some café owners. It’s the word used in the trade for everyone who works in the drinks industry but excludes restaurants. Now all waiters in bars are the same. I don’t mean that they all look exactly the same, but there’s a family likeness. How often does it happen that you have the feeling that you recognize a waiter you’ve never actually seen before?

  ‘Most of them have sensitive feet, as you would expect. You only have to look at their feet. They wear light, supple shoes, almost like slippers. You’ll never see a wait
er in a bar or a head waiter in a restaurant wearing outdoor shoes, with triple soles. And their profession requires them to wear white shirts.

  ‘I’m not saying that it’s compulsory, but there is also a fair percentage who walk like ducks.

  ‘I would also add that, for reasons which escape me, waiters who work in bars have a pronounced weakness for horse-racing and that many of those who work early or late shifts, are keen race-goers.’

  ‘So, to get to the point, you have come to the conclusion that our man was a waiter in a café.’

  ‘No, actually.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand.’

  ‘He was part of the lemonade club but not a waiter. I’ve given it hours of thought as I lay here dozing.’

  Each word, sculpted in ice, must have shaken Coméliau.

  ‘Everything I’ve told you about waiters also applies to bar-owners. Don’t think I’m boasting but I always felt that my dead man wasn’t an employee but rather someone who worked for himself. That is why, at eleven this morning, I phoned Moers. The shirt is still with Criminal Records. I couldn’t remember what state it was in. He had another look at it. Here, luck was on our side because it could have been brand new. Everyone puts on a new shirt from time to time. Fortunately, this one wasn’t. It is quite worn round the collar.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me that the owners of bars wear out their shirts at the collar?’

  ‘No, sir. Not more than anyone else.

  ‘But they don’t wear them out at the wrists. I’m talking about small cafés with a lower-class clientele, not the American-style bars around the Opera House or on the Champs-Élysées. The owners of small bars who have their hands continually in water or ice keep their sleeves rolled up all the time. Now, Moers confirmed that the shirt, worn at the collar to the point where it had been rubbed threadbare, shows no trace of wear on the cuffs.’