Maigret's Mistake Page 6

  Most of the lights were off in Quai des Orfèvres. He slowly climbed the stairs, where wet soles had left prints, and opened the door to his office. Janvier was waiting for him. It was the time of year when the contrast is most noticeable between the cold outside and the warmth of buildings, which seem overheated and where the blood immediately rushes to your head.

  ‘Any news?’

  The police machine was dealing with Pierre Eyraud. At the railway stations, inspectors were examining those travellers whose description matched his. At the airports, too. The Hotel Agency were probably also on the trail, scouring the hotels and rooming houses of the eighteenth arrondissement.

  In Rue Briquet, young Lapointe had been hanging about outside the Hôtel du Var since early afternoon. Now that night had fallen, prostitutes were prowling about the hotel.

  As for Inspector Janin, the local man, he was indulging in a more personal kind of search … The north-east of Paris was a stone jungle in which a man can disappear for months, where often you don’t hear about a crime until weeks after it has been committed; thousands of people, men and women, live outside the law, in a world where they find as many refuges and helping hands as they want and where the police occasionally cast a net and pick up someone they are looking for, quite by chance, but are more likely to rely on a telephone call from a jealous girl or an informer.

  ‘Gastine-Renette called an hour ago.’

  He was the ballistics expert.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘You’ll have his written report tomorrow morning. The bullet that killed Louise Filon was fired from a 6.35 calibre automatic.’

  What in the Police Judiciaire is called an amateur weapon. Real criminals, those who really have the intent to kill, use more serious weapons.

  ‘Dr Paul also phoned. He’d like you to get in touch with him.’ Janvier looked at his watch. It was just after 7.15. ‘By now he’s probably at the restaurant, La Pérouse, where he’s guest of honour at a dinner.’

  Maigret called the restaurant. A few moments later, the pathologist came on the line.

  ‘I carried out a post-mortem on the girl you sent me. I may be mistaken, but I have the impression I’ve seen her before.’

  ‘She was arrested several times.’

  It couldn’t have been Lulu’s face, distorted by the gunshot, that the doctor thought he had recognized, but her body.

  ‘Obviously the shot was fired at close range. It doesn’t take an expert to see that. I reckon the distance was between 25 and 30 centimetres, no more than that.’

  ‘I assume death was instantaneous.’

  ‘As instantaneous as could be. The stomach still contained undigested food, including lobster.’

  Maigret remembered seeing an empty lobster can in the waste bin in the kitchen.

  ‘She drank white wine with her meal. Is that of any interest?’

  Maigret did not yet know. At this stage of the investigation, it was impossible to say what might prove important.

  ‘I discovered something else that may surprise you. Did you know the girl was pregnant?’

  Maigret was indeed surprised, so surprised that for a moment he did not speak.

  ‘How far gone?’ he asked at last.

  ‘About six weeks. She might not even have known. If she did know, she’d probably only recently found out.’

  ‘I assume you’re certain about this?’

  ‘Absolutely. You’ll get the technical details in my report.’

  Maigret hung up and said to Janvier, who was standing waiting in front of the desk:

  ‘She was pregnant.’

  But Janvier, who knew only the broad outline of the case, was unimpressed by this.

  ‘What shall we do with Lapointe?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s a good point. We should send someone to take his place.’

  ‘I have Lober, who has nothing in particular to do.’

  ‘We should also relieve Lucas. There’s probably no point, but I’d still like to have someone keeping an eye on the apartment.’

  ‘If I can eat something first, I’ll go. Is it OK to sleep there?’

  ‘I don’t see any reason why not.’

  Maigret glanced at the latest editions of the newspapers. The photograph of Pierrot had not been published yet. It must have reached the editorial offices too late, but his complete description was given.

  The police are looking for Louise Filon’s boyfriend, a dance-hall musician named Pierre Eyraud, known as Pierrot, who was the last person to visit her last night.

  Pierre Eyraud, who has served a number of prison sentences, has dropped out of sight. He is believed to be hiding in the La Chapelle district, which he knows well …

  Maigret shrugged, stood up and hesitated before heading for the door.

  ‘If there are any developments, can you be reached at home?’

  He said yes. He had no reason to stay in the office. He had himself driven home in one of the cars, and, as usual, Madame Maigret opened the door to the apartment before he had turned the handle. She made no reference to the fact that he was late. Dinner was ready.

  ‘I hope you didn’t catch cold?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You should take your shoes off.’

  ‘My feet aren’t wet.’

  It was true. He hadn’t walked all day. On a cabinet lay the same evening paper he had glanced through at the office. His wife knew all about it, then, but she did not ask him any questions.

  She knew he wanted to go out again, because he hadn’t taken off his tie as he almost always did. Once dinner was over, she watched her husband open the sideboard and pour himself a glass of sloe gin.

  ‘Are you going out?’

  Even a moment earlier, he hadn’t been sure. To tell the truth, he had rather been expecting Professor Gouin to phone him. It was based on nothing specific. Wasn’t Gouin thinking that the police would question him? Wasn’t he surprised they weren’t paying any attention to him, even though a lot of people knew about his relations with Lulu?

  He called Louise Filon’s apartment. Janvier had just settled in.

  ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘Nothing new, chief. I’ve let my wife know. It’s nice and quiet here. I’m going to spend the night on the sofa, which is fantastic.’

  ‘Do you know if the professor has come home?’

  ‘Lucas told me he went up about half past seven. I haven’t heard him go out.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  Had Gouin guessed that his wife would talk to Maigret? Had she been capable of not letting on to him? What had they said to each other as they were having dinner? Presumably, once the meal was over, the professor was in the habit of retiring to his office.

  Maigret poured himself another glass, which he drank standing by the sideboard, then walked over to the coat stand and took down his heavy overcoat.

  ‘Take a scarf. Do you think you’ll be out for long?’

  ‘An hour or two.’

  He had to walk as far as Boulevard Voltaire to find a taxi. He gave the driver the address of the Grelot. There was little bustle in the streets, except round Gare de l’Est and Gare du Nord. Gare du Nord always reminded Maigret of his early years in the police.

  On Boulevard de La Chapelle, below the overhead Métro, the familiar shadowy figures were in their places, the same as every night, and although it was obvious what the women were doing there, what they were waiting for, it was less easy to define the reasons some men had to be there, doing nothing, in the cold and dark. They weren’t all searching for a temporary companion. Nor did all of them have an appointment. There were men of all races and ages, who emerged from their holes at night like rats and ventured to the edges of their territory.

  The neon sign of the Grelot cast a purple light on a section of the pavement, and from the taxi Maigret made out muted music, more like a rhythm accompanied by a muted shuffling. Two uniformed officers were standing on duty under a streetlamp a short dis
tance away, and at the door there was a midget who seemed to be taking the air but who hurried inside when Maigret got out of the cab.

  That is always the way in such places. No sooner had Maigret entered than two men pushed past him and hurried out, heading for the darkest depths of the neighbourhood.

  At the bar, others turned their heads away as he passed them, in the hope of not being recognized, and as soon as his back was turned sped off in their turn.

  The short, stocky owner came towards him. ‘If it’s Pierrot you’re looking for, inspector …’

  He was deliberately speaking loudly, underlining the word ‘inspector’ so that everyone in the room should know who he was. Here, too, the light was purple, and the customers sitting at the tables and in the booths could barely be made out, because only the dance-floor was lit, and the faces received only the reflected glow of the spotlights, making them look ghostly.

  The music did not stop playing, or the couples dancing, but the conversations had ceased, and all eyes were turned to the massive figure of Maigret, who was looking for a free table.

  ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This way, inspector …’

  Saying this, the owner had the air of a fairground entertainer showing off in front of the painted canvas of his booth.

  ‘What are you drinking? It’s on the house.’

  Maigret had expected that as he came in. He was used to it.

  ‘A marc.’

  ‘An old marc for Inspector Maigret!’

  The four musicians were on their balcony, wearing black trousers and dark-red silk shirts with long puffed sleeves. They had found a way to replace Pierrot: someone was playing the saxophone, alternating with the accordion.

  ‘Is it me you want to talk to?’

  Maigret shook his head and pointed to the balcony.

  ‘The musicians?’

  ‘Whoever knows Pierrot best.’

  ‘That’d be Louis, the accordion player. He’s the one leading the band. They’ll be taking a break in a quarter of an hour, and he can come and talk to you for a bit. I don’t suppose you’re in any hurry?’

  Five or six more people, including one of the dancers, felt the need to go out for air. Ignoring them, Maigret looked calmly around him, and the people gradually resumed their conversations.

  There were a certain number of prostitutes here, but they weren’t on the lookout for clients. They had come to dance, most with their boyfriends, and they were absorbed in their dancing, which for them was a kind of sacred ritual. Some had their eyes closed, as if in ecstasy, others danced cheek to cheek with their partners but without trying to move their bodies closer.

  There were also typists and shop girls in the room, who were only there for the music and the dancing, and you didn’t see any onlookers, any couples out for a good time, as in most dance halls, getting a kick out of rubbing shoulders with the underworld.

  There were only two or three dance halls like this left in all of Paris. Most of the people here were initiates, and they drank lemonade rather than alcohol.

  From the balcony, the four musicians were looking imperturbably at Maigret, and it was impossible to guess what they were thinking. The accordion player was a handsome brown-haired man of about thirty who looked like a matinee idol and had long Spanish-style sideburns.

  A man with a big pocket in his apron collected small change.

  Couples remained on the dance-floor. There was another dance, a tango this time, for which the spotlights changed from purple to red, erasing the women’s make-up, staining the musicians’ shirts, and then at last the musicians put down their instruments, and the owner said a few words from below to the accordion player, whom he had called Louis.

  Louis looked once again at Maigret’s table and made up his mind to come down the ladder.

  ‘You can sit down,’ Maigret said.

  ‘We start again in ten minutes.’

  ‘That’s all I need. What will you have?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  A silence followed. They were being watched from the other tables. There were more men crowding around the bar now. In some of the booths, there were only women, touching up their make-up.

  Louis was the first to speak.

  ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he said in a rancorous tone.

  ‘About Pierrot?’

  ‘Pierrot didn’t kill Lulu. But it’s always the same!’

  ‘Why has he run away?’

  ‘He’s no more stupid than anyone else. He knows he’ll get the blame for it. Would you like to be arrested?’

  ‘Is he your friend?’

  ‘Yes, he’s my friend. I probably know him better than anyone else.’

  ‘Then maybe you know where he is.’

  ‘If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Do you know?’

  ‘No. I haven’t heard from him since we said goodbye last night. Have you read the papers?’ Louis’ voice was shaking with contained anger. ‘People assume that, just because someone plays in a dance hall, he has to be some kind of tough guy. Maybe you think that, too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You see the tall fair-haired guy who plays the drums? Well, believe it or not, he’s someone who graduated from high school and even spent a year at university. His parents are comfortably off. He’s here because he loves it and he’s getting married next week to a girl who’s studying medicine. I’m married, too, if you really want to know, I have two children, my wife is expecting a third, and we live in a four-roomed apartment on Boulevard Voltaire.’

  Maigret knew it was true. Louis was forgetting that the inspector knew that environment almost as well as he did.

  ‘Why hasn’t Pierrot married?’ he nevertheless asked in a low voice.

  ‘That’s another story.’

  ‘Didn’t Lulu want to?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘A few years ago, Pierrot was arrested as a pimp.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Like I said, that’s another story.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘You still wouldn’t understand. First of all, he was in care when he was a child. You know what that means?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At the age of sixteen, they let him go, and he did what he could. In his place, I might have been worse than him. But I had parents like everyone else. I still have them.’

  He was proud to be a man like any other, but at the same time he felt the need to defend those who found themselves on the other side of the tracks, and Maigret could not help smiling sympathetically.

  ‘Why do you smile?’

  ‘Because I know all this.’

  ‘If you knew Pierrot, you wouldn’t set all your informers on his tracks.’

  ‘How do you know the police are after him?’

  ‘The papers haven’t made it all up. And you can already feel a stir in the neighbourhood. When you spot certain faces around, you know what that means.’

  Louis didn’t like the police and made no attempt to hide it.

  ‘There was a time when Pierrot acted tough,’ he went on.

  ‘And wasn’t he?’

  ‘Will you believe me if I tell you he’s soft-hearted, a romantic? Well, it’s the truth.’

  ‘Did he love Lulu?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he meet her when she was on the game?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he let her carry on.’

  ‘What else could he have done? You see, you don’t understand!’

  ‘Then he let her have a regular lover who kept her.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Can you tell me what he had to offer her? Do you imagine he could have supported her with what he earns here?’

  ‘You support your family, don’t you?’

  ‘Wrong! My wife’s a dressmaker and works ten hours a day as well as looking after th
e kids. What you don’t understand is that, when you’re born around here, when you haven’t known anything else …’ He broke off. ‘I only have four minutes left.’

  The other musicians were still looking at them from the balcony, their faces expressionless.

  ‘What I know is that he didn’t kill her. And the only reason he didn’t get her away from that doctor of hers—’

  ‘So you know who Lulu’s lover was?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Was it Pierrot who told you?’

  ‘Everyone knows it started at the hospital. All right, I’ll tell you what Pierrot thought about it. She had a chance to get away from this once and for all, to have a steady life and not worry about the future. That’s why he said nothing.’

  ‘And Lulu?’

  ‘Maybe she had her reasons.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘It’s none of my business.’

  ‘What kind of girl was she?’

  Louis looked at the women around them with the air of saying she was no different from the others.

  ‘She had a tough life,’ he said, as if that explained everything. ‘She wasn’t happy down there.’

  ‘Down there’ clearly meant the distant Étoile neighbourhood, which, from here, seemed like another world.

  ‘She came here from time to time to dance …’

  ‘Did she seem unhappy?’

  Louis shrugged. Did that word have a meaning in La Chapelle? Were there any truly happy women around them? Even the shop girls looked nostalgic as they danced and requested sad songs.

  ‘We only have a minute. If you still need me after that, you’ll have to wait half an hour.’

  ‘When he got back from Avenue Carnot last night, did Pierrot say anything to you?’

  ‘He apologized and said he’d had some important news, but didn’t go into details.’

  ‘Did he seem down?’

  ‘He’s always down.’

  ‘Did you know that Lulu was pregnant?’

  Louis stared at him, incredulous at first, then stunned and finally grave.

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘The pathologist who carried out the post-mortem can’t have made a mistake.’