Signed, Picpus Read online

Tens of thousands of Parisians are now getting home with a taste of country and sweat on their lips and flowers from field and woods filling their cars.

  ‘That you, sir?’

  Now it’s Lucas’s turn.

  ‘Nothing to report … The old man got home at seven … No one’s come out … They’re probably all in bed now because there are no lights showing … Shall I hand over to Janvier? … Good night, sir … Thanks …’

  It’s a bit like the watchman’s cry in times gone by: ‘Midnight and all is well! …’

  A final phone call from the inspector in charge of the Rue Coulaincourt police station.

  ‘Nothing to report …’

  But on this fine Sunday, something has happened for sure. As yet only a glimpse of distant eddies, of bubbles on the surface of the water that reveal the presence of fish which are disturbing the mud on the bottom.

  ‘What if I asked if they have another room so that you could have the bed to yourself and sleep through?’

  The moon rises. The gramophone falls silent, though one couple still makes the gravel crunch in the dark.

  5. A Man Complains

  That day, Maigret had almost reached the point of being ashamed of being a policeman. From time to time, just as an actor uses an exit from the stage to stand in the wings for a moment to wipe the sweat off and let his features and muscles relax, he would step into the office next door, where Lucas was scarcely less proud of himself than he was.

  ‘Anything?’ was the question in the sergeant’s eyes.

  Nothing. Maigret took a sip of beer and stood at the open window, morose, care-worn and feeling sick to the stomach.

  ‘What is she playing at?’

  ‘This is the third time she’s been on at the duty officer at the desk insisting on speaking to you. Last time, she demanded to see the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire.’

  Actually, it lent some light relief to the situation … At two o’clock, the time he had notified Octave Le Cloaguen to come to see him in his office, the inspector had glanced out of his window and seen a taxi draw up outside on Quai des Orfèvres. Out of it got the scrawny figure of Madame Le Cloaguen. The vehicle remained at the kerb. Maigret had smiled and given an order to an officer.

  And that is where the whole episode had turned farcical.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’ the clerk asked solemnly. ‘Are you Octave Le Cloaguen? …’

  ‘I would like to see the detective chief inspector … I shall explain to him …’

  She was shown into the famous glazed waiting room where detainees (the word is chosen advisedly) under the eye, calm or sardonic, of passing inspectors had a vague feeling that they were being caged, like animals.

  While she was kept waiting, an inspector went out to fetch Le Cloaguen, who was sitting in the taxi.

  ‘Was it my wife who said I should go up?’

  ‘No, the detective chief inspector.’

  ‘Where is my wife?’

  It was now three hours that the old man in the greenish overcoat had been in Maigret’s office, sitting on the same chair, facing the open window.

  Each time Maigret came back from brief breaks next door with Lucas, the moment he crossed the threshold he was confronted by the pale stare of Le Cloaguen, the look of a dog which knows it has little to expect from man but is equally certain that it cannot escape his power.

  Yes, that was exactly what that expression signified. Resignation so utter that it was painful to see, because it took little imagination to know that to sink that low the old man must have suffered greatly.

  Three or four times he had asked the same thing:

  ‘Where is Madame Le Cloaguen?’

  ‘She’s waiting for you …’

  The answer did not reassure him. He knew his impatient, imperious wife only too well, and he could imagine that she would not be sitting demurely in a waiting room.

  In the time-honoured way, Maigret had begun with the ‘soft’ routine: some pretty good-natured, friendly questions asked as if no particular importance was being attached to them, and making it seem as if the interview was just a formality.

  ‘The other day I forgot to clear up one point … You said that when there was that special knock on Mademoiselle Jeanne’s door, she was in the middle of telling your fortune with cards. Is that right?’

  Le Cloaguen listened without answering, giving the impression he did not understand.

  ‘Mademoiselle Jeanne pushed you into a room and locked the door behind you. Now, what I’d like to know is whether the cards stayed on the table or whether she picked them up … Take your time … Collect your thoughts … God knows why, but the examining magistrate attaches an importance to this question which in my view is excessive …’

  Le Cloaguen does not move. He sighs, with his hands resting on his knees, those hands which again draw Maigret’s attention as they had in the taxi.

  ‘Try and picture the scene … It’s hot … The window that leads out on to the balcony is open … Everything is light and airy around you, and the cards with their various colours are spread out on the marble top of the Louis XV table …’

  The expression in the old man’s eyes seems to be saying: ‘You don’t understand, do you, what I’m going through, that you are tormenting a defenceless old man?’

  Maigret looks away, feeling ashamed, then says in his kindly voice:

  ‘Please answer the question … This is not an official interview, because what you say is not being written down … The cards remained on the table, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘It was a full reading that Mademoiselle Jeanne was doing for you?’

  ‘Yes …’

  At this, Maigret gets up, goes to the door, calls in Lucas and says in a scathing voice:

  ‘Honestly, sergeant … I can tell you now: your information is incorrect, because I really don’t think Monsieur Le Cloaguen has come here to tell me lies …’

  Well, well! As one former interior minister famously said, you don’t run a police force by employing choirboys. Do murderers have scruples?

  ‘You stated clearly, sergeant, did you not, that Mademoiselle Jeanne did not tell fortunes with cards, and that there wasn’t even a pack of cards in the whole place? …’

  ‘That’s right. All the witness statements are in agreement on that point. Mademoiselle Jeanne was not a fortune-teller who read cards but an extra-lucid clairvoyant who put herself in trances using a crystal ball like they do in the Orient …’

  ‘Oh dear, Monsieur Le Cloaguen! … I expect you didn’t hear my question properly a few moments ago, or did you answer without thinking? There weren’t any cards on the table, were there?’

  Beads of sweat appear on his forehead, and the veins stand out.

  ‘I don’t know …’ he mutters.

  ‘Lucas, you can go! … Monsieur Le Cloaguen, I’m sorry to bring up a delicate matter … I think I can guess … It’s clear, in fact it’s patently obvious, that you are not very happy at home … In your position you, like many men of your age, looked for consolation elsewhere, friendship, affection, a little feminine warmth. I knew from the start that you weren’t the sort of man who has his fortune told. If you were in Rue Coulaincourt, if your lady friend hid you in her kitchen, it was because you weren’t there as a client …’

  The old man does not dare say yes and he does not dare say no. What new surprise will the inspector spring on him when he returns from the office next door after gathering his strength and lights a fresh pipe with such exasperating slowness?

  ‘You’re the only one who can help us. We know very little about the victim. All we know is that when she came to Paris she worked first as a seamstress then as a model. Later she opened a modest dressmaker’s shop in Rue Saint-Georges called Chez Jeanne, and the name Jeanne stuck to her. The business did not make money, and she moved to Rue Coulaincourt … What contacts did she have? Who
were her friends? It’s vital that we establish facts like that …’

  ‘I don’t know anything …’

  ‘Come now! I can understand that you wish to be discreet. But don’t forget that our only concern is to punish the man who murdered your friend.’

  It’s enough to try the patience of a saint. And now the old man has started crying, sobbing bitterly, silently, without stirring, without wiping his eyes, without removing those gnarled hands from his knees! To hide his frustration, Maigret is obliged to turn his back on him and stare out of the window at a convoy of passing barges …

  ‘None of this concerns your wife or anybody else … I’d even understand, since you are a wealthy man, if you’d given financial help to a young woman who needed money. Because it’s obvious someone was helping her. She didn’t make enough out of her men and women customers to cover her expenses, because, though she didn’t live a life of luxury, she was comfortable … You have an income of 200,000 francs …’

  The charade continues. Maigret shuffles the papers scattered over his desk.

  ‘One of my men went the extra mile and looked into your financial situation … It’s quite interesting! What we’ve found is all very much to your credit. Thirty years ago you worked as a doctor on a ship belonging to the Far Eastern line … An ultra-rich Argentinian beef baron was travelling with his daughter … There was an outbreak of yellow fever …’

  Maigret continues to pretend to be looking through his papers …

  ‘It appears that you were brilliant. Thanks to you, there was no panic on board. Moreover, you saved the girl’s life … On the other hand, you went down with the fever yourself and when the ship reached port you had to be disembarked. At that point, the grateful Argentinian decided to settle on you an annual sum of 200,000 francs, for life … I congratulate you, Monsieur Le Cloaguen. When you got back to France, you married the girl you were engaged to. You never went to sea again. You settled at Saint-Raphaël, where you lived happily for many years … Unfortunately, age made your wife avaricious and brought out the domineering streak in her character … In Paris your life changed …’

  Surely the old man must be wondering how long this torture is going to last. Could it be about to end at any moment? Maigret gets to his feet and starts walking towards the door, smiling, like a man whose job is almost done, but suddenly changes his mind and finds another question to ask – just a small one, hardly a question at all.

  ‘By the way, when you had your accident … It did happen at Saint-Raphaël, didn’t it? Just before you left for Paris? … You were chopping firewood. You liked doing it yourself, because in those days you had just two maids … Caught yourself with the axe. Ended up, as it happened, with you losing the top joint of the index finger on your right hand … You must find it rather a handicap … I have no more questions for you, Monsieur Le Cloaguen …’

  So it really is all over … But the man must have fathomed Maigret’s method, for he doesn’t get up yet; only his eyes are asking if he is really free to go.

  ‘One of your friends was talking to me about you yesterday … Hang on! … I must have a photo of him somewhere in my drawer …’

  It is a photograph of Monsieur Blaise which was taken as he walked along one of the main boulevards.

  ‘Let’s see … what was his name again? … You can probably remember … He told me …’

  A bad move. Le Cloaguen looks at the photo without reacting … If anything he seems relieved, as if he had been expecting something else …

  ‘Doesn’t the picture remind you of anybody? … Still, it’s probably a long time since you lost sight of each other? … It doesn’t matter …’

  Maigret goes next door, where Lucas gives him a wink.

  ‘I’d say it’s only a matter of minutes before his wife makes a real scene. She refuses to stay put. She keeps bothering the desk officer every five minutes. She yells. She demands to see the commissioner. She’s threatening to go to the newspapers and bring all her high-placed contacts into it …’

  It’s been three hours since she was told to wait, three hours that the old man has been facing the ordeal of being alone with Maigret. But Maigret won’t give way. This man makes him uneasy. He senses a mystery, and it irritates him. Yet at the same time he cannot stop feeling an odd kind of sympathy which is not just pity.

  The ‘singing session’ goes on, ‘softer’ than ever. Maigret puts on a graver, embarrassed expression.

  ‘Well now, there’s something else which isn’t going to make things any simpler. The examining magistrate has phoned to say that a new witness has come forward. It’s a man who lives just opposite 67A, Rue Coulaincourt. He claims that last Friday, a few minutes after five, he saw you throwing a key out of the window … The key has been found …’

  ‘I don’t care …’ mutters Le Cloaguen.

  ‘But his statement makes your position worse and …’

  Maigret places a key on his desk.

  ‘You know very well, inspector, that it’s not true,’ murmurs the old man with disarming meekness.

  ‘Listen, Monsieur Le Cloaguen … Why don’t you admit that the life you lead is, to put it mildly, ambiguous? You are rich, intelligent. You were an exceptional ship’s doctor and a man of courage, as your service record shows. And then all of a sudden you start living like a miserable wretch, at home you are locked up as if you’re in the way and outside you spend each and every day wandering the streets and walking by the river. What happened to bring about such a change? Why did you leave Saint-Raphaël and settle in Paris? … Why? …’

  Le Cloaguen looks up. His pale eyes are tragic in their frankness and he murmurs:

  ‘You know I’m not right in the head …’

  ‘What you mean is that certain people, your wife and perhaps your daughter, keep trying to convince you that you’re mad? …’

  He shakes his head and repeats flatly, stubbornly:

  ‘No, I am mad …’

  ‘Think about the seriousness of what you’re saying. If you really are mad, which I don’t believe, there is nothing to say that you are not the man who murdered Mademoiselle Jeanne … No one can anticipate what a madman will do … You were in her flat … The idea of killing her enters your head … You acted on the idea, then you become lucid again. You are frightened by the consequences of what you’ve done and to deflect suspicion or because you hear someone coming up the stairs, you shut yourself inside the kitchen and throw the key out of the window …’

  No reply.

  ‘Is that how it happened?’

  Maigret is almost afraid to hear a yes, even though it would bring the entire investigation to a close. What he gets is a very different result. It has taken three hours to extract a statement which casts a faint glimmer of light on …

  ‘I’m mad all right, but I didn’t kill Jeanne …’

  ‘You called her Jeanne … I take it then that you admit that you were very close to her? … Tell me exactly what she meant to you … Don’t feel embarrassed … We’re used to hearing all kinds of things here …’

  ‘I have nothing to say … I am very, very tired …’

  Then he adds, shamefaced and shy:

  ‘I’m thirsty …’

  At this, Maigret goes next door again, returns with a large glass of beer; the old man’s face goes down to the beer, and the level drops as his Adam’s apple moves up and down.

  ‘Where did your wife go on Sunday between eleven and four?’

  ‘I didn’t even know she’d gone out.’

  ‘Were you locked up in your room?’

  No reply. The old man stares at the floor. Maigret would give his right arm for one moment of plain candour. Of all the men he’s ever interviewed – and quite a few have passed through this office on Quai des Orfèvres! – never before when confronted by any man has he felt he was dealing with such an enigma. The inspector feels frustrated and bored at the same time. There are moments when his hackles rise and he feels he could …
r />   ‘Listen, Le Cloaguen, you can’t tell me you don’t know anything, not even why they lock you up like a dog with the mange …’

  ‘It’s because I’m mad …’

  ‘Mad people don’t know they’re mad.’

  ‘But I am mad … I never killed anyone, inspector … I haven’t done anything wrong … I swear you’re wide of the mark to …’

  ‘In that case why don’t you talk, for God’s sake?’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  Either he’s the stupidest man on earth or else …

  ‘Look at me, in the eye … On my desk there’s an arrest warrant made out in your name … If your answers are not satisfactory I can arrange for you to spend tonight here, in the cells …’

  Whereupon the most unexpected thing happens. Instead of being frightened, the old man looks reassured, content. It’s as if the prospect of going to jail is a pleasant proposition.

  Could it be that the thought of escaping the tyranny of both women …

  ‘Why do you let them order you around without complaining? … Just between the two of us men … All your neighbours talk about you. Some scoff, others feel sorry for you …’

  ‘My wife looks after me …’

  ‘What, by letting you go out winter and summer in an old overcoat a tramp wouldn’t be seen dead in? By refusing to give you money to buy tobacco? Yesterday, an inspector saw you picking up a cigarette end in the street as if you were down and out … You, with an income of 200,000 francs a year! …’

  No reply. Maigret loses his temper:

  ‘You are locked up in the darkest, shabbiest room on the apartment. They hide you from visitors as if you were some undesirable or repulsive creature …’

  ‘I tell you she really looks after me …’

  ‘What you mean is that your wife and daughter don’t let you die! And you know exactly why that is. When your Argentinian beef baron was so grateful that he settled an income on you, could it be by chance that he drew up the papers in such a way that on your death your heirs and assigns wouldn’t get another penny? The pension of 200,000 francs is paid to you personally … Isn’t it true, Monsieur Le Cloaguen, that you know damn well why you are being, in your own words, taken good care of? …’