Maigret and the Saturday Caller Page 5

  Monday was the only day of the week when they all shook hands. He found Lucas, Janvier, young Lapointe and the others there, and all of them, unless they happened to be on weekend duty, would, like him, have spent Sunday at home with their families.

  He chose in the end to call in Lapointe and Janvier to his office.

  ‘Have you kept the cards we had made for the Rémond case?’

  It went back a few months, to the early autumn. They had needed to find some evidence against a certain Rémond, who went by several identities and was suspected of having committed crimes in most of the countries of Europe. He lived in furnished lodgings in Rue de Ponthieu and, in order to gain admission while he was away without raising the landlady’s suspicions, Janvier and Lapointe had turned up one morning with official-looking cards from some vague office for re-evaluating the surface area of the building.

  ‘We have to measure all the rooms and the corridor,’ they had announced.

  They had briefcases stuffed with papers under their arms, and young Lapointe, looking conscientious, had taken notes, while Janvier brought out his tape measure.

  This wasn’t very legal. But it was not the first time the trick had been used and it could be tried again.

  ‘You’re to go to Rue Tholozé. Up at the end on the right, there’s a small dwelling-house at the far end of a courtyard.’

  Maigret would have dearly liked to go there himself, and sniff round the corners of the house, about which he wanted to know everything.

  He gave detailed instructions and, once his colleagues had left, turned to current matters.

  The sky was still pale and unyielding, the Seine a vicious grey. It was almost midday when Janvier and Lapointe returned, and he took the time to sign a few administrative papers and ring for Joseph to collect them.

  ‘Well, boys?’

  Janvier spoke first.

  ‘We rang the bell.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine you did. Was it the wife who came to the door? What’s she like?’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Dark-haired, quite tall, good figure …’

  ‘Attractive woman?’

  This time, Lapointe broke in:

  ‘Gergeous female, if you ask me.’

  ‘What was she wearing?’

  ‘Red dressing gown, slippers, hadn’t done her hair. Yellow nightdress underneath.’

  ‘Did you see the daughter?’

  ‘No, she must have been in school.’

  ‘Was the van in the courtyard?’

  ‘No, and there wasn’t anyone in the workshop.’

  ‘How did she receive you?’

  ‘She seemed wary. She peered at us first, through the curtains. Then we heard footsteps in the corridor. She opened the door just a crack, only showing half her face, and said:

  ‘ “What is it? I don’t need anything.”

  ‘We explained what it was.’

  ‘Did she seem taken aback?’

  ‘She asked:

  ‘ “Are you doing this to all the houses in the street?”

  ‘And when we said yes, she decided to let us in.

  ‘ “Will it take long?”

  ‘ “Half an hour at most.”

  ‘ “Do you really have to measure the whole house?” ’

  Next, the two inspectors gave their impressions. What had struck them most was the kitchen.

  ‘It was a magnificent kitchen, chief, very light and modern, all the latest gadgets. You wouldn’t expect to find a kitchen like that in an old house. They’ve even got a dishwasher.’

  Maigret was not surprised. It seemed in character for Planchon to have given his wife every possible luxury.

  ‘Well, the house looks nice inside. You can see at once it belongs to a painter, everything’s newly decorated. In the little girl’s room, the furniture’s all been painted pink.’

  This too corresponded to the character of the Saturday caller.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Next to the kitchen, there’s quite a big living room they use as a dining room, and it has rustic-type furniture.’

  ‘Did you find the camp bed?’

  ‘Yes, it was in a cupboard.’

  Janvier added:

  ‘I said casually to her:

  ‘ “That’s handy, isn’t it, if you have friends to stay?” ’

  ‘And she didn’t react?’

  ‘No. But she followed us everywhere, watching everything we did, not too sure we’d really come from an official agency. She asked at one point:

  ‘ “What’s the purpose of all these measurements you’re taking?”

  ‘I trotted out our formula: from time to time, because people alter their houses, we need to review the basis for the local land tax, and as long as they hadn’t extended their place, they had nothing to worry about.

  ‘I don’t think she’s all that bright, but she’s not the sort of woman who’d let herself be taken advantage of either, and I was thinking a moment would come when she’d pick up the phone to call our supposed agency. Because of that, we hurried up. Two more rooms on the ground floor: a bedroom and a little room that seems to be an office, where the telephone is.

  ‘The bedroom, nicely painted too, hadn’t been tidied, there was stuff everywhere. The office was the kind of cubby-hole small businesses all have: filing cabinets, bills on a spike, a stove in the fireplace, and samples piled on the mantelpiece. The bathroom’s not downstairs, but on the first floor, next to the daughter’s room.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  Lapointe broke in:

  ‘The telephone rang while we were there. She made the caller repeat the name twice, wrote it on a pad and said:

  ‘ “No, he’s not here at the moment. He’s out on a job. What? … Monsieur Prou, yes. I’ll pass on the message and he’ll be over to see you, probably this afternoon.”

  ‘Now, chief, if the size of the rooms interests you …’

  They’d done what they were asked. Although Maigret was not much further forward than before, now at least he had a clearer idea of the house, and it was exactly as he had imagined it.

  Did the two men, the husband and the lover, work on the same site or, on the contrary, did they choose to take on different jobs? Surely they were obliged by their work to speak to one another? If so, what tone did they use?

  Maigret returned home for lunch and asked if there had been any phone calls. No, there had not, and it was a little after six p.m. when he received in his office the call he had been waiting for.

  ‘Hello! Monsieur Maigret?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘Planchon here.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In a café in Rue des Abbesses, just next to a house I’ve been working on all day. You see, I’ve kept my word. You asked me to phone you.’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Are you feeling calm?’

  ‘I’m always calm. I’ve been thinking a lot.’

  ‘Did you take your daughter out for a walk yesterday morning?’

  ‘How did you know? Yes, I took her to the flea market.’

  ‘What about the afternoon?’

  ‘They took the van.’

  ‘All three of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you stayed home?’

  ‘I went to sleep.’

  So he had been in the house when Maigret and his wife had walked past it.

  ‘I’ve thought a lot.’

  ‘What conclusion have you come to?’

  ‘I don’t know. No conclusion. I’m going to try and hang on as long as possible. When it comes to it, I’m wondering if I really want things to change. And anyway, as you said the other day, I’d be in danger of losing Isabelle.’

  Maigret could hear the clink of glasses, the murmur of voices and the sound of a cash register.

  ‘Will you call me tomorrow?’

  The man at the other end hesitated.

  ‘Do
you think there’s any point?’

  ‘I’d prefer it if you called me every day.’

  ‘You don’t trust me?’

  What could he say to that question?

  ‘I’ll survive, don’t you worry.’

  He laughed a little bitterly.

  ‘I’ve survived two years. I’m enough of a coward to carry on the same way. Because I am a coward, aren’t I? Admit it, that’s what you think. Instead of acting like a real man would’ve done, I come whimpering to you.’

  ‘You were quite right to come, and you didn’t whimper.’

  ‘You don’t despise me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you tell your wife everything the minute I was out of the door?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She didn’t ask you who was the annoying person who had spoiled your dinner?’

  ‘You ask yourself too many questions, Monsieur Planchon. You’re too self-conscious.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Go home.’

  ‘To my house?’

  Maigret did not know what to say to that. He could not remember feeling so embarrassed in his life.

  ‘Well, for goodness’ sake, it is your house, isn’t it? If you don’t want to do that, go somewhere else. Just don’t go trailing from bar to bar, because you’ll only get yourself more distressed.’

  ‘I get the feeling you’re angry with me.’

  ‘No, I’m not angry. I’d just like you to stop mulling over the same ideas.’

  Maigret did feel some irritation, but with himself. He was perhaps wrong to be talking like this. It’s difficult, especially over the telephone, to find the right words to say to a man who is thinking of killing his wife and his foreman.

  The situation was absurd, and it was as if Planchon had sensitive antennae as well. Although Maigret wasn’t really angry, he was certainly annoyed with this man for troubling him with a story he wouldn’t have dared tell his colleagues in case they thought him naive.

  ‘Keep calm, Monsieur Planchon.’

  He could only think of those empty phrases used for condolences.

  ‘Don’t forget to call me tomorrow. And tell yourself that what you have in mind wouldn’t solve anything. On the contrary.’

  ‘Well, thank you, anyway …’

  His heart wasn’t in it. Planchon was disappointed. He’d just finished work, and no doubt hadn’t yet drunk enough alcohol for a different mood to take over, letting him see things the way he had on Saturday evening.

  When he was sober, he must be without illusions. What kind of image did he have of himself, and the ridiculous or odious figure he cut in a house that belonged to him?

  That last ‘Well, thank you, anyway’ had sounded bitter and Maigret would have preferred to carry on talking, but the other man had hung up. There was another solution, which Planchon had hardly mentioned on Saturday, and which suddenly made the inspector anxious.

  Now that Planchon had articulated his troubles by telling them to someone, now that he could have no illusions about himself, wouldn’t he be tempted to end it all by killing himself?

  If Maigret had known where he was phoning from, he would have called him back at once. But what could he say?

  Damn it all! It wasn’t really anything to do with him. He wasn’t obliged to intervene. It wasn’t his job to put people’s lives right, he was supposed to find those who had committed a crime.

  He went on working for an hour, in a bad mood, on the jewel thefts, which would probably take weeks to solve. It seemed clear that on each occasion, the thief had been a guest at the hotel from which the jewels had disappeared. The thefts had taken place in four different hotels, at two or three days’ interval.

  That being so, it should have been easy enough to study the lists of guests and catch the person or persons who turned up on the different lists. But that didn’t work. And the descriptions provided by the reception staff were no assistance either.

  Weeks? It would probably take months, and it was quite likely that the dénouement would take him to London, Cannes or Rome, unless the jewels could be traced through some known fence in Antwerp or Amsterdam.

  Still, this was less depressing than worrying about Planchon. Maigret took a taxi home, since it was late. He ate his dinner, watched television, went to bed, and was woken as usual by the smell of coffee.

  In the office, he growled:

  ‘Get me the station in the eighteenth. Hello, is that the eighteenth? … That you, Bernard? Nothing on your patch last night? … No? No murders? No one gone missing? … Listen. I’d like someone to keep a discreet eye on a house at the top end of Rue Tholozé, just by the steps. Yes … No, not twenty-four hours a day, of course. Just at night. If the man on patrol could glance in, check for instance that the house-painter’s van is in the courtyard … Thanks. If by any chance the van’s not there at night, can you call me? … No, nothing precise. Just a hunch. You know how it is. Thank you.’

  Another routine day, people to question, not just about the jewels but in connection with two or three other less important cases.

  From six o’clock, he was waiting for the telephone to ring. It rang twice, but it wasn’t Planchon either time. By six thirty, he had still not called, nor at seven, and Maigret felt angry with himself for being on edge.

  Nothing dramatic could have happened during the day. It was highly unlikely for instance that, while his child was at school, Planchon would have come home to kill his wife, then waited for Prou to return before killing him too. In fact, Maigret realized he had not asked him how he proposed to do the deed. Had the painter not declared that he had prepared his plan for a double murder down to the smallest detail?

  He surely did not possess a revolver and, even if he did, it was unlikely he’d use it. Men like him, with a manual trade, mostly prefer to use one of their usual tools.

  But what tool would a painter and decorator have? He could not help laughing to himself, as he thought of a paintbrush.

  At a quarter past seven, there had still been no call, so he went home. The telephone did not ring there, either during dinner or in the course of the evening.

  ‘You’re still thinking about him?’ asked his wife.

  ‘Not all the time, of course, but it’s bothering me.’

  ‘You once told me that people who talked a lot didn’t generally take action.’

  ‘No, as a rule they don’t. But it does happen.’

  ‘Have you caught cold?’

  ‘Perhaps from walking round Montmartre on Sunday. Does my voice sound hoarse?’

  She went to find him an aspirin and he slept soundly all night, waking to find rain beating on the windows. He waited until ten next morning before calling the eighteenth.

  ‘Bernard?’

  ‘Yes, chief.’

  ‘Nothing in Rue Tholozé?’

  ‘No, the van didn’t leave the yard.’

  It was only at seven that night, having heard nothing further, that he decided to telephone the house in Rue Tholozé, where a man’s voice he did not recognize replied.

  ‘Planchon? Yes, that’s right. But he’s not here. He won’t be back this evening either.’

  4.

  Maigret had the impression that the man at the other end had tried to hang up on him abruptly, but that at the last moment he had hesitated, as if suspicious. The inspector hastened to ask:

  ‘Is Madame Planchon there?’

  ‘She’s out.’

  ‘And she won’t be in tonight either?’

  ‘She should be back any minute. She just went to do a bit of shopping round the corner.’

  Another silence, and the line was so good that Maigret could hear Prou breathing.

  ‘What do you want with him? Who are you?’

  He was on the point of pretending to be a customer, saying anything that came to mind. After a pause, he preferred to ring off.

  He had never seen the man he was speaking to. The little he knew of him had come from Planchon, who ha
d good reason to be biased.

  Yet, immediately, as soon as he had heard his voice, Maigret had felt antipathy for Renée’s lover, and was annoyed with himself on that account. It was not because of the husband’s story that the feeling came. It was the voice itself, the aggressive drawl. He would have sworn that Prou, at the other end, was staring at the telephone with suspicion, and that he never replied directly to questions.

  This was a kind of man he knew well, men who don’t let anyone get the better of them, who look you up and down with a beady eye and, at the first awkward question, frown with their bristling eyebrows.

  Did he really have bristling eyebrows? And did his hair grow down low on his forehead?

  Bad-temperedly, Maigret sorted out his papers, and followed his usual routine by calling Joseph.

  ‘Nobody else for me?’

  Then he put his head round the door of the inspectors’ office.

  ‘If anyone wants me, I’m at home.’

  On the embankment, he opened his umbrella. Standing on the deck of the bus, he found himself crammed against someone with a streaming wet raincoat.

  Before sitting down to dinner, he called Rue Tholozé again. He was feeling unhappy about everything and everyone. He felt aggrieved at Planchon, who had come to him with his pathetic and ridiculous story, he felt aggrieved at Roger Prou, heaven knew why, and he felt angry with himself. He almost felt annoyed with his wife, who was looking at him anxiously.

  Was it their normal practice in that house not to pick the phone up at first? It sounded as if it was ringing in an empty space. Then he remembered that the telephone was in the little office. No doubt they would be eating their meal in the kitchen, so they would have some distance to come.

  At last, someone. A woman.

  ‘Madame Planchon?’

  ‘Yes. Who is that?’

  She was speaking naturally, in a low-pitched and not unattractive voice.

  ‘I wanted a word with Léonard.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘You don’t know when he’ll be back? I’m a friend of his.’

  This time, as with Prou, there was a silence. Was Roger Prou alongside her and were they exchanging questioning glances?

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘Never mind, you don’t know me. I was supposed to meet him this evening.’