Maigret Takes a Room Page 6

  And yet he seemed less afraid than one might have expected. He even seemed to be relaxing. Perhaps, in the end, being caught was a relief.

  ‘So you went and hid in Mademoiselle Clément’s bedroom?’

  ‘I didn’t think it would last for such a long time. I told myself I would probably have an opportunity to get away.’

  ‘And she found you?’

  ‘I must have moved without meaning to. I was sleeping. I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t go to sleep, but it happened anyway.’

  It was strange, observing the two of them, he emaciated like a young wild animal, she fat and placid like a provincial aunt.

  It would have been particularly funny to have witnessed the scene that had played out in the room that night. Had Mademoiselle Clément been as surprised as she claimed?

  He had probably wept, and she had probably consoled him. She had gone to get him something to eat and drink. Almost certainly, she had poured him a little glass of chartreuse.

  Since then, for five days, they had lived in the same room, with just one bed, where they must have slept in turn. Because that was something that Maigret believed.

  From dawn till dusk, young Paulus contemplated the springs of the mattress and gave a start at the slightest sound. He had heard the comings and goings of the inspectors, of Maigret, the questions and the answers.

  Because of the continuous surveillance, Mademoiselle Clément had had to get up in the night to give him something to eat.

  Maigret smiled, thinking of the enormous sandwich that he had forced her to devour at 2.30 in the morning, when she hadn’t been hungry.

  A car stopped not far from the house, one of the cars from the Préfecture in which Lucas, according to Maigret’s instructions, waited patiently beside the driver.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Mademoiselle Clément, who had heard the car as well. ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

  She glanced desolately at her walls, her furniture, the house she thought she had to abandon.

  ‘Not straight away,’ he said. ‘It will depend. Come with me, young man. You can bring your toothbrush and a comb.’

  ‘My parents will know about this, won’t they?’

  ‘They must have found out yesterday, from the newspapers.’

  ‘What did my father say?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. There’s a chance that he will have set off for Paris yesterday evening.’

  ‘I’d rather not see him.’

  ‘I can see that! Come on.’

  The young man hesitated, pointing to Mademoiselle Clément.

  ‘It really isn’t her fault, you know. She’s …’

  He looked for the word and couldn’t find it.

  ‘She’s …’

  ‘Charming, I know. You can tell me all that at Quai des Orfèvres.’

  They passed through the kitchen, the sitting room where Maigret had spent the evening chatting to the fat woman. He gestured to Lucas from the stone doorway.

  And Lucas, spotting the young man, whistled with admiration.

  He obviously thought that the whole business was over.

  It was only beginning.

  4.

  Which relates an interrogation in the course of which Maigret doesn’t get angry even once

  Even in the little police car Maigret hadn’t stopped observing young Paulus from the corner of his eye, and Lucas, who was closely watching his chief, thought he looked strange.

  They hadn’t handcuffed the young man. He looked eagerly out of the window and was no longer afraid; he wasn’t shaking now as he had been when he came out from under Mademoiselle Clément’s bed. At one point he came out with the most surprising phrase that Lucas had ever heard uttered by someone who had just been arrested. The car had turned into Boulevard Saint-Michel and was driving past a municipal water cart.

  A little further on, between a glove shop and a cinema, the red sign of a tobacconist’s stood out in the sunlight.

  With the exact expression of a schoolboy raising his hand to ask permission to go to the toilet, Paulus said:

  ‘I don’t suppose we could stop for a moment so that I could buy some cigarettes?’

  It wasn’t a trick to escape. That would have been too naive. Without getting angry, and staring at him with his big, brooding eyes, Maigret had replied:

  ‘There are some in my office.’

  The inspector had returned to his office with obvious pleasure, the same pleasure that the young man had shown at the sight of the bustle of the streets in the sun.

  ‘Sit down.’

  He had taken the time to read the mail that waited for him, to give instructions on cases already under way. He had opened the window, stuffed a pipe and held out a pack of cigarettes to his interlocutor.

  ‘Now, tell me.’

  ‘You know, it wasn’t me who shot the inspector. I swear. Anyway, I didn’t have a gun. The one I used at the Stork was a fairground toy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You believe me, don’t you? I didn’t leave Mademoiselle Clément’s bedroom. What reason would I have had to kill a police inspector?’

  ‘You didn’t want to leave the house?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  He said that quickly, with so much conviction that it was almost comical.

  ‘Where would I have gone? Because the police had come to Rue Lhomond, they knew who I was. So I was a wanted man. So, outside, they would have arrested me in the end.’

  ‘Was that your idea or Mademoiselle Clément’s?’

  ‘Mine. I begged her to look after me. I promised to be good and not look at her when she undressed.’

  ‘You didn’t look at her?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Did you expect to stay in that room for a long time?’

  ‘Until the police stopped thinking about me.’

  ‘Where would you have gone?’

  ‘Maybe to meet up with …’

  He bit his lips and blushed.

  ‘Go on …’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I mustn’t let the cat out of the bag.’

  ‘You don’t want to reveal your accomplice’s name? Was he the one you expected to meet up with?’

  ‘Yes. But I’m not a snitch.’

  ‘You’d rather be the only one to take the rap, even if you’re the less guilty of the two.’

  ‘I’m not the less guilty.’

  Maigret had had many suspects of Paulus’ age in his office, boys who had done more or less the same thing, for the same reasons, who had put themselves on the wrong side of the law to get hold of some money, almost always in a stupid way.

  It was the first time that he had seen one like Paulus. Some of them, as soon as they were arrested, went to pieces, begged, wept, talked about their parents, sometimes sincerely, others with a sidelong glance to judge the effect produced.

  Most of them were nervous, tense, arrogant. Many were exploding with hatred and blamed society.

  Paulus, on the other hand, sat obediently on his chair. He smoked his cigarette in little puffs, quite calm, only giving a start when someone knocked at the door, thinking each time that it was his father, who seemed to frighten him more than prison did.

  ‘Who came up with the idea of the job on Rue Campagne-Première?’

  ‘We came up with it together.’

  ‘But you were the one who knew the Stork?’

  ‘Yes. I’d gone in there, by chance, for the first time a few weeks ago.’

  ‘You often went to nightclubs?’

  ‘When I had money.’

  ‘And the toy gun was your idea too?’

  ‘Jef …’

  He broke off. He blushed again, then smiled.

  ‘I know you’ll end up making me say something I don’t want to say.’

  ‘So, better to spill the beans straight away.’

  ‘Is there an extradition treaty with Belgium?’

  ‘That
depends on the felony.’

  ‘But we didn’t commit a felony!’

  ‘In legal language, it’s called a felony.’

  ‘Because I didn’t fire. I couldn’t have fired, even if I’d wanted to.’

  ‘Tell me, Paulus. If your friend was here, I’m sure he’d drop you in it.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘He’s a Belgian, Jef van Damme. Too bad! He used to be a waiter in a café.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Twenty-five. He’s married. He got married almost as soon as he arrived in Paris, three years ago, after his military service. At that time he was working in a brasserie on Boulevard de Strasbourg and he married a bit-part actress. They have a child, a little boy.’

  He was relaxed. As his cigarette had finished, he asked for another one.

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘In a bar, near Les Halles.’

  ‘A long time ago?’

  ‘Almost a year.’

  ‘Was he still a waiter in a café?’

  ‘He wasn’t working regularly any more. He did odd jobs here and there. He was very poor.’

  ‘Do you have his address?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you can take any action against his wife? I can tell you right away that she doesn’t know a thing. I’ll explain everything to you and you can believe me. Her name is Juliette. She’s in poor health, she’s always complaining. Jef claimed that he didn’t know why he’d married her, that he had no intention of spending his life with her and that he wasn’t sure the child was his.’

  ‘Their address?’

  ‘Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile, 27A, at the end of a courtyard, third floor.’

  Maigret, who had jotted down the address on a piece of paper, went into the neighbouring office to give instructions to Lucas.

  ‘Everything all right, chief?’

  He shrugged. It was almost too easy.

  ‘Good! Let’s get back to Jef and Juliette. You were saying?’

  ‘Have you sent an inspector to her place?’

  Maigret nodded.

  ‘You’ll see that I wasn’t lying, that he isn’t there and his wife doesn’t know a thing. Only, if you repeat to her what I’ve told you, you’ll upset her, and she’s a nice girl.’

  ‘Have you slept with her?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Did Jef know?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s hard to tell with him. He’s a lot older than me, you know? He’s travelled a lot. When he was seventeen he was a steward on the boats and went all the way around the world.’

  ‘Did he want to leave Juliette?’

  ‘Yes. And he’d had enough of Paris. He dreamed of going to America. He needed money for that. I needed money too.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘I couldn’t go on starving.’

  He said those words with disarming simplicity. He was thin, underfed, with irregular features, but there was something winning about his expression.

  ‘Did the two of you commit other robberies?’

  ‘Only one.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘It was when I was living with them.’

  ‘You lived with the van Dammes?’

  ‘For two months. First, when I came to Paris and was working on Boulevard Saint-Denis, I took a room in a hotel on Rue Rambuteau. Then I lost my job.’

  ‘Because you were stealing from petty cash.’

  ‘They told you that?’

  ‘Then what did you do?’

  ‘I looked for a job. Everyone asked me if I’d done my military service. They didn’t want to take on a boy for just a few months. At night I carried vegetables at Les Halles. I walked around with a placard on my back. My parents sent me a bit of money, not enough, and I didn’t dare admit to them that I was unemployed, because they would have made me go back to Limoges.’

  ‘Why didn’t you go back to Limoges?’

  ‘Because it’s no life.’

  ‘While the one you were leading was a life?’

  ‘I could hope for anything. I owed two months’ rent, and I was going to be thrown out, when I met Jef. He let me sleep at his, on a sofa.’

  ‘Tell me about the first robbery. Whose idea was it?’

  ‘It was his. I didn’t know it was possible. We were both sitting in a café. A middle-aged man started staring at me persistently, I didn’t understand why. He looked like a provincial industrialist or big businessman. Jef told me that the man was bound to make some propositions to me as soon as I was on my own, and all I had to do was let him talk. You understand?’

  ‘I understand only too well.’

  ‘Once we were in the room I would threaten to call for help, and he would offer me money to keep quiet.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You didn’t do it again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps because I was too scared. And also it struck me as dirty.’

  ‘No other reasons?’

  ‘A few days later I met the man with a middle-aged woman, probably his wife, and he gave me a pleading look.’

  ‘Did you and Jef share the proceeds?’

  ‘Of course. He was the one who had given me the idea.’

  ‘And Juliette?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think he would have liked her to walk the streets. She didn’t want to. They argue all the time. Often he left me alone with her. She undressed in front of me, even when he was there. They weren’t at all embarrassed around me.’

  ‘And that’s how it happened?’

  ‘Yes. Almost without my noticing. I didn’t have many opportunities, for want of money.’

  ‘What did van Damme live on?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me about his business affairs. He hung out in shady bars around Porte Saint-Denis. He went to the races a lot. Sometimes he had some money in his pocket, other times not.’

  ‘Was he suspicious of you?’

  ‘He called me the First Communicant.’

  ‘Why did you leave their flat?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t stay there for ever, especially after what had happened with Juliette. I went to all the addresses in the classified ads. I started selling encyclopedias. At first it went quite well, and I moved into Mademoiselle Clément’s.’

  ‘Who gave you her address?’

  ‘It was just by chance, going from door to door, that I saw the sign. I went in and she immediately seemed to be interested in me.’

  ‘Did she buy an encyclopedia from you?’

  ‘No. She showed me the free room, and I moved in that evening. She’s always been kind to me. She’s very good. She’s nice to everyone. I owe her three months’ rent, and she’s never thrown me out. Quite the opposite, you know what she’s done.’

  ‘There’s never been anything between you?’

  ‘Never, word of honour.’

  ‘You’ve never tried?’

  Paulus looked at him with genuine astonishment.

  ‘She’s over forty!’

  ‘Obviously! Have you told her everything you’ve just told me?’

  ‘Not everything.’

  ‘Van Damme and Juliette?’

  ‘Yes. Not the story about the man from the provinces. Van Damme sometimes came to see me, and he occasionally slept in my room, on days when he had argued with his wife. We were both trying to find a way of making some quick money.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve already explained. Jef wanted to go to Belgium and from there apply for papers for the United States.’

  ‘Abandoning his wife and son?’

  ‘Yes. I thought if I had a little money in front of me I’d come up with an interesting scheme.’

  ‘Wasn’t it also a bit about paying for prostitutes?’

  ‘I’d have liked to do that, of course.’

  ‘Did you know it was because of the one you met one evening at
the Stork that we found you?’

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me. She wasn’t very nice. She was quick to turn me out, and afterwards she hurried to a bar that was still open, hoping to find a better customer.’

  He said that without rancour, but with a hint of bitterness. Unprompted, he went on:

  ‘Jef and I had read a story in the paper about a “hold-up”, as they say, which brought in three million. Some masked young men had attacked a debt collector. The article explained why there wasn’t any chance of tracking them down.’

  ‘So you thought about a debt collector?’

  ‘Not for very long. They’re almost always armed. But I remembered the Stork, where the till is near the door and where there’s never anyone after two in the morning.’

  ‘Who got hold of the car?’

  ‘Jef. I can’t drive.’

  ‘Did he steal it?’

  ‘He took it from a street corner, and afterwards we abandoned it a few streets away.’

  ‘Did Jef have a gun?’

  Paulus didn’t hesitate.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know the make?’

  ‘I often saw it at his place. It was a little automatic made in Belgium, at the national factory in Herstal.’

  ‘He didn’t have another one?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘There was no question of using it for the Stork job?’

  ‘I was against it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So that it would be less serious if we were caught.’

  The internal telephone rang, and Maigret picked up. It was Lucas, announcing that he was back from the Ile Saint-Louis. Maigret looked Paulus in the eyes and asked him:

  ‘You’re not going to try and escape, are you?’

  ‘What good would it do me?’

  He left him alone in his office while he went to see Lucas.

  ‘Van Damme?’ he asked.

  ‘He vanished five days ago. His wife doesn’t know what’s become of him. She’d been expecting him to abandon her for some time. Things were going quite badly at home. They have a child.’

  ‘What kind of woman is she?’

  ‘A worn-out little thing, the kind you meet by the thousand. It seemed to me that she had tuberculosis.’

  ‘Has she got any money?’

  ‘Not a cent.’

  ‘What does she live on?’