Maigret's Madwoman Read online

‘At five in the afternoon?’

  ‘You probably won’t get a chance to eat later. Have a bite now, or pick up some sandwiches. You’re going to 8a, Quai de la Mégisserie where you’ll replace Janvier in an apartment on the first floor. I’ll have you relieved early tomorrow morning. You’ll find the keys on the round table in the sitting room.

  ‘You’ll need to be alert, because the murderer also has a key and didn’t have to force the door.’

  ‘You think he’ll be back?’

  ‘This case is so peculiar that anything’s possible.’

  Next, Maigret called Doctor Forniaux.

  ‘Have you had time to do a post-mortem?’

  ‘I was just going to dictate my report. Do you know, this woman, given her state of health, could have gone on to be a hundred! Her organs were in as good a condition as those of a young girl.

  ‘She was smothered, as I thought from the start. I think it will have been with a scarf or something with red threads in it, because I found one between her teeth. She tried to bite it. She certainly put up a fight before she ran out of oxygen.’

  ‘Thanks, doctor. I’ll wait for your report.’

  ‘You’ll get it first thing tomorrow.’

  Léontine Antoine didn’t drink, since there had been no wine or alcohol in the apartment. She ate a lot of cheese. These were the details that occurred to Maigret as he watched the traffic on the Pont Saint-Michel. A convoy of barges was going under the bridge, pulled by a tug with a large white trefoil on its funnel.

  The sky was pink, tinged with blue, the leaves on the trees were still a tender shade of green, and the birds were singing loudly.

  It was just then that Picot, the officer who had first noticed the old lady, asked if the inspector would see him.

  ‘I don’t know if this interests you. I’ve just seen the photograph in the paper. That lady, I know her. What I mean is, I saw her nearly a week ago. I was on duty outside the main door. She wandered about on the pavement for a while, looking up at the windows and peeping into the courtyard. I thought she was going to speak to me, but she went off without saying anything.

  ‘She came back next day and this time she was bold enough to step inside the courtyard. I didn’t stop her. I just thought she was a tourist, because there are plenty of them. The day after that, I wasn’t on duty. Lecoeur was replacing me, and he saw her go inside and take the stairs up to the Police Judiciaire. He didn’t ask if she had a summons, because she seemed so determined.’

  ‘Thank you. Put it in a report. And Lecoeur the same.’

  So it seemed she had been haunting police headquarters for some time before asking to see Inspector Maigret. And he had sent her Lapointe, whom she had at first taken for his son.

  Which had not prevented her, after that, from waiting for him on the pavement.

  Old Joseph was knocking at his door, as was his habit, and opened it without waiting for an answer.

  He held out a form, on which the name written was Billy Louette.

  Yet the masseuse had told Maigret a few hours earlier that she thought her son was somewhere on the Côte d’Azur.

  ‘Show him in, Joseph.’

  3.

  ‘I suppose you’ve been looking for me?’

  ‘Not yet. Your mother said you were on the Côte d’Azur.’

  ‘Oh, what my mother says, you know! … Is it all right to smoke?’

  ‘If you wish.’

  The young man did not seem overawed to be inside police headquarters and apparently considered Maigret to be simply an official of no particular rank.

  This was neither defiance nor ostentation on his part. His ginger hair was rather long, but he did not look like a hippy. He was wearing a suede jacket over a checked shirt, with beige corduroy trousers and moccasins.

  ‘When I read in the papers what had happened to my aunt, I thought right away you’d want to see me.’

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come.’

  He did not in the least resemble the masseuse. Whereas she was tall and heavily built, with man-sized shoulders, he was short and quite thin, with bright blue eyes. Maigret had sat down behind his desk and motioned to him to take the armchair opposite.

  ‘Thank you. So what exactly happened to the old lady? The papers didn’t say much.’

  ‘They say what we know: she was murdered.’

  ‘Was anything stolen?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘In any case, she didn’t keep much cash at home.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I’d go and see her now and then.’

  ‘When you were short of money?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Otherwise, what was I going to talk to her about? My life wouldn’t interest her.’

  ‘And she gave you some?’

  ‘Usually a hundred-franc note, but I wasn’t supposed to come back too often.’

  ‘You’re a musician, I gather?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a guitarist, I play in a group called Les Mauvais Garçons.’

  ‘And can you make a living doing that?’

  ‘We have our ups and downs. Sometimes we’re hired to play in an important nightclub, other times we play in cafés. What did my mother tell you about me?’

  ‘Nothing very much.’

  ‘Well, as you can see, she’s not exactly overflowing with motherly affection. For a start, we’ve very little in common. My mother thinks only about money, about how she’s going to fare in her old age, as she says, so she saves all her pennies. She’d go without eating if she could, so as to have more to put away.’

  ‘Was she fond of your aunt?’

  ‘She couldn’t stand her. I’ve often heard her say with a sigh: “When’s the old bird going to hop the twig?”’

  ‘Why did she want to see her dead?’

  ‘Well, to inherit, of course! With two pensions, the old lady must have had some pretty substantial savings. But I liked her a lot, and I think she liked me too. She’d always insist on making me coffee and bringing out the biscuits. She’d say: “I’m sure you don’t get enough to eat every day. Why don’t you learn a proper trade?”

  ‘My mother wanted me to learn a trade too. She even picked out something for me when I was fifteen: she wanted me to be a chiropodist. She’d say: “There are so few of them you have to wait a week for an appointment. Now that’s an occupation that pays well and it’s not unpleasant.”’

  ‘When did you last see your great-aunt?’

  ‘About three weeks ago. We’d hitchhiked to London, hoping to get some work, but the groups over there are better than us, they play in all kinds of combinations. We came back stony broke, so I went round to see her.’

  ‘And she gave you your hundred francs.’

  ‘Yes, and some biscuits.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘I move around a bit. Sometimes I’m shacked up with a girl and other times I live on my own. Which I’m doing at the moment. I’m renting a room in a small hotel in Rue Mouffetard.’

  ‘And you have work?’

  ‘Up to a point. You know the Bongo Club?’

  Maigret shook his head. The young man seemed surprised that anyone might not have heard of the Bongo Club.

  ‘It’s a little café-restaurant on Place Maubert. The owner’s from the Auvergne. He caught on very quickly to the kind of neighbourhood it is. So there’s quite a hippy clientele, and he sometimes allows drinks on the house. And in exchange for a free dinner and a few francs, he also has live music performers, which is where we come in. We do our set twice or three times in the evening. And there’s a girl called Line, a fantastic singer. That brings him customers. They come along to stare at the famous hippies, and they don’t believe us when we say we don’t smoke marijuana or hash.’

  ‘Do you intend to carry on being a musician?’

  ‘Yes. I hope so. That’s all that matters to me. I’ve started writing songs too, but I haven’t found my voice yet. But what I can tell you is that I didn’t kill the
old lady. In the first place, that’s not me, I don’t go round killing people. But in any case, I’d be sure to be suspected right away.’

  ‘Did you have a key to her apartment.’

  ‘What would I have done with one?’

  ‘Where were you yesterday at about six p.m.?’

  ‘In bed.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Well, I was by then. We’d been up almost all night at the Bongo. I’d picked up a girl who seemed nice: a Scandinavian type, Danish or Swedish. We had a lot to drink. I took her home with me in the early morning, and it must have been three in the afternoon before I went to sleep. Later on, I realized she’d got out of bed, and I heard her moving about. I didn’t wake up properly, but I sensed there wasn’t anyone beside me any longer.

  ‘I was really hung over, and absolutely worn out, so I didn’t get up myself until after nine o’clock.’

  ‘So in other words, nobody can vouch for you between, let’s say, five and eight p.m.?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Might you be able to find this girl again?’

  ‘If she isn’t at the Bongo tonight, she’ll be in some other club in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘You know her well?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So she’s a new girlfriend?’

  ‘It’s not the way you think it is. We come and go. I told you we went to London. We hitchhiked to Copenhagen too, and everywhere we go, we pick up new friends.’

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  ‘Just her first name: Hilda. And I know her father is quite a high-up civil servant.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Twenty-two, she told me, I don’t know who she was going to meet, otherwise she might have stayed with me for weeks. That’s the way it goes. You split up, half the time you don’t know why, but you stay friends.’

  ‘Tell me about your relations with your mother.’

  ‘I already told you we don’t get on.’

  ‘But she brought you up.’

  ‘She didn’t really want to, and that’s one of the reasons she didn’t like the old lady. She’d hoped my aunt would look after me. Because my mother went out to work, she had to take me to the crèche every morning and fetch me in the evening. Same thing when I started school. She didn’t like having a kid, and it was a nuisance when she had men around.’

  ‘Did she often have men around?’

  ‘It depended. Once we lived for six months with this guy I was supposed to call papa, and he was usually hanging about the house.’

  ‘He didn’t go out to work?’

  ‘He claimed to be a sales rep, but he didn’t seem to get out much. Other times, I might hear sounds in the night, but next morning there would be nobody there. The men were nearly always younger than her, especially as time went on.

  ‘About a fortnight ago, I met her on Boulevard Saint-Germain with this tall skinny guy I’ve quite often seen round the clubs. People call him “Big Marcel”.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Not personally, but the word is he’s a pimp. And she likes a drink, don’t forget.’

  He was both cynical and candid.

  ‘But look, I don’t suspect my mother of killing my aunt. My mother’s just the way she is. So am I, and I wouldn’t be able to change either. Perhaps I’ll make it big time, and perhaps I’ll just end up another no-hoper like all the others in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Got any more questions for me?’

  ‘Plenty probably, but I can’t think of any just now. Are you happy with your life?’

  ‘Most of the time, yes.’

  ‘You wouldn’t prefer to have become a chiropodist like your mother wanted? You might be married with children yourself by now.’

  ‘It doesn’t tempt me. Maybe later.’

  ‘What effect did it have on you when you read that your great-aunt was dead?’

  ‘My heart did miss a beat. I didn’t know her all that well. As far as I was concerned, she was this very old woman who by rights ought to have died years ago. But I liked her all the same. I liked her eyes and the way she smiled.

  ‘“Eat up,” she’d say to me. And she’d watch me munching my biscuits with this kind of tender look. Apart from my mother, I was all the family she had.

  ‘She’d say: “Come on, why don’t you get your hair cut?” That was what bothered her most. She’d go: “It makes you look like what you’re not. Because basically, you’re a good boy.”

  ‘So when’s the funeral?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Leave me your address and I’ll see you’re informed, probably in the next couple of days. But it depends on the examining magistrate.’

  ‘Do you think she suffered?’

  ‘She put up a bit of a fight, not much. Do you have a red woollen scarf or one with a red pattern?’

  ‘I never wear a scarf. Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason, I’m just searching. We’re feeling our way.’

  ‘And you don’t suspect anyone?’

  ‘No one in particular, no.’

  ‘Could it have been a burglary?’

  ‘But why choose Madame Antoine and attack her in a building that’s crammed with people? The murderer was looking for something.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. If he knew her, he must have been aware that she only kept very small sums of money at home. And anyway, this person had visited her apartment several times when she wasn’t there. Do you know if she owned any valuables?’

  ‘She had a few jewels, but nothing very grand. Just modest bits of jewellery she’d received from her two husbands.’

  Maigret had found them: a ring with a garnet, and matching earrings. A gold bracelet and a small gold watch.

  In the same box, there had been a pearl-topped tie-pin which must have belonged to Caramé, and some silver cuff-links. All of these were very old-fashioned and with practically no sale value.

  ‘Did she have any documents?’

  ‘What do you mean, documents? She was a very simple old woman who’d lived a peaceful life, first with husband number one, then later with the second one. I never knew Caramé, he died before I was born, but I knew the other one, Joseph Antoine. He was a good sort.’

  Maigret stood up with a sigh.

  ‘Do you often visit your mother?’

  ‘Hardly ever.’

  ‘Then you don’t know whether she is on her own or whether this Marcel character you mentioned is living with her?’

  ‘You’re right, I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Thank you for coming in, Monsieur Louette. Perhaps one of these days I’ll turn up to hear you play.’

  ‘The best time for that is eleven p.m.’

  ‘By then, I’m usually in bed.’

  ‘Am I still a suspect?’

  ‘Until we have evidence to the contrary, everyone’s a suspect, but you’re no more so than anyone else.’

  Maigret closed the door after the young man and went to rest his elbows on the window-sill. Dusk was falling. Outlines were less clear. He had learned a great many things, but they were of no use to him.

  What on earth could someone be looking for in the home of the old woman on Quai de la Mégisserie?

  She’d lived for over forty years in the same apartment. Her first husband had had nothing mysterious about him, then she had lived on as a widow for about ten years.

  And the second husband did not seem to have anything out of the usual about him either. He had died years ago, and since then she had led a monotonous existence, without seeing anyone except her niece and great-nephew.

  But why had no one tried to get into her apartment before this? Did it mean that whatever they were looking for had not been there long?

  He gave a shrug, sighed and headed for the inspectors’ office.

  ‘See you tomorrow, boys.’

  He went home by bus, reflecting that he had a strange job. He looked round at his anonymous fellow passengers, telling himself that at an hour�
�s notice, he might have to investigate the life of one of them.

  He had found the red-headed boy with long hair likeable enough, whereas now he felt moved to ask his mother some indiscreet questions.

  Madame Maigret opened the door when he reached their landing, as always.

  ‘You look preoccupied.’

  ‘No wonder. I’m struggling with a case that I don’t understand at all.’

  ‘The old lady who was murdered?’

  She had read the newspaper, of course, and listened to the radio.

  ‘You met her when she was alive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you think of her?’

  ‘I told myself she was mad, or a bit touched anyway. She was a tiny slip of a thing, very fragile, and she begged me to take up her case, as if I was the only person in the world who could help her.’

  ‘And did you do anything?’

  ‘I couldn’t provide her with round-the-clock police protection. All she was complaining about was that sometimes, when she got home, she would find that objects weren’t in their usual place.

  ‘I’ll admit I thought she was imagining things, or perhaps her memory was failing. But I did promise myself I’d call round to see her, more to reassure her than for any other reason. Yesterday, she must have come back sooner than usual from her walk, and the visitor, man or woman, was still in the apartment.

  ‘All that person had to do was press a scarf or some other piece of material over her face to smother her.’

  ‘Did she have any family?’

  ‘Just a niece and a great-nephew. I’ve seen both of them. The niece is massive, built like a man – she actually works as a masseuse. The young man, on the contrary, is small and skinny. He has red hair and plays the guitar in some club in Place Maubert.’

  ‘And nothing was stolen?’

  ‘It’s impossible to tell. The only clue, if we can call it that, is that there had been a revolver in the drawer of her bedside table, and it’s no longer there.’

  ‘You wouldn’t kill an old woman in cold blood for the sake of a revolver. And you wouldn’t search an apartment several times for it either.’

  ‘Let’s eat.’

  They dined, just the two of them, by the open window, without switching on the television. It was a very mild evening. The air stood still, as a pleasant coolness took hold; they could faintly hear the leaves quivering on the trees.