The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien Page 6

  ‘That you’re free, that’s all! May I add that I’m quite ready to return your hospitality and invite you to dinner.’

  Rarely had he felt so light-hearted. The other man gaped at him in amazement, almost in fear, as if the inspector’s words had been heavy with hidden threats. Warily, Van Damme rose to his feet.

  ‘I’m free to return to Bremen?’

  ‘Why not? You just said yourself that you’ve committed no crime.’

  For an instant, it seemed that Van Damme might recover his confidence and bluster, might even accept that dinner invitation and explain away the incident at Luzancy as clumsiness or a momentary aberration …

  But the smile on Maigret’s face snuffed out that flicker of optimism. Van Damme grabbed his hat and clapped it on to his head.

  ‘How much do I owe you for the car?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Only too happy to have been of service.’

  Van Damme was at such a loss for words that his lips were trembling, and he had no idea how to leave gracefully. In the end he shrugged and walked out, muttering, ‘Idiot!’

  But it was impossible to tell what or whom he meant by that.

  Out on the staircase, as Maigret leaned over the handrail to watch him go, he was still saying it over and over …

  Sergeant Lucas happened along with some files, on his way to his boss’s office.

  ‘Quick! Get your hat and coat: follow that man to the ends of the earth if you have to …’

  And Maigret plucked the files from his subordinate’s hands.

  The inspector had just finished filling out various requests for information, each headed by a different name. Sent out to the appropriate divisions, these forms would return to him with detailed reports on these persons of interest: Maurice Belloir, a native of Liège, deputy director of a bank, Rue de Vesle, Rheims; Jef Lombard, photoengraver in Liège; Gaston Janin, sculptor, Rue Lepic, Paris; and Joseph Van Damme, import-export commission agent in Bremen.

  He was filling out the last form when the office boy announced that a man wanted to see him regarding the suicide of Louis Jeunet.

  It was late. Headquarters was practically deserted, although an inspector was typing a report in the neighbouring office.

  ‘Come!’

  Ushered in, his visitor stopped at the door, looking awkward and ill at ease, as if he might already be sorry to have come.

  ‘Sit down, why don’t you!’

  Maigret had taken his measure: tall, thin, with whitish-blond hair, poorly shaved, wearing shabby clothes rather like Louis Jeunet’s. His overcoat was missing a button, the collar was soiled, and the lapels in need of a brushing.

  From a few other tiny signs – a certain attitude, a way of sitting down and looking around – the inspector recognized an ex-con, someone whose papers may all be in order but who still cannot help being nervous around the police.

  ‘You’re here because of the photo? Why didn’t you come in right away? That picture appeared in the papers two days ago.’

  ‘I don’t read them,’ the man explained. ‘But my wife happened to bring some shopping home wrapped in a bit of newspaper.’

  Maigret realized that he’d seen this somewhere before, this constantly shifting expression, this nervous twitching and most of all, the morbid anxiety in the man’s eyes.

  ‘Did you know Louis Jeunet?’

  ‘I’m not sure. It isn’t a good photo. But I think … I believe he’s my brother.’

  Maigret couldn’t help it: he sighed with relief. He felt that this time the whole mystery would be cleared up at last. And he went to stand with his back to the stove, as he often did when in a good mood.

  ‘In which case, your name would be Jeunet?’

  ‘No, but that’s it, that’s why I hesitated to come here, and yet – he really is my brother! I’m sure of that, now that I see a better photo on the desk … That scar, for example! But I don’t understand why he killed himself – or why in the world he would change his name.’

  ‘And yours is …’

  ‘Armand Lecocq d’Arneville. I brought my papers.’

  And there again, that way he reached into his pocket for a grimy passport betrayed his status on the margins of society, someone used to attracting suspicion and proving his identity.

  ‘D’Arneville with a small d and an apostrophe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were born in Liège,’ continued the inspector, consulting the passport. ‘You’re thirty-five years old. Your profession?’

  ‘At present, I’m an office messenger in a factory at Issy-les-Moulineaux. We live in Grenelle, my wife and I.’

  ‘It says here you’re a mechanic.’

  ‘I was one. I’ve done this and that …’

  ‘Even some prison time!’ exclaimed Maigret, leafing through the passport. ‘You’re a deserter.’

  ‘There was an amnesty! Just let me explain … My father had money, he ran a tyre business, but I was only six when he abandoned my mother, who’d just given birth to my brother Jean. That’s where it all started!

  ‘We moved to a little place in Rue de la Province, in Liège, and in the beginning my father sent us money to live on fairly regularly. He liked to live it up, had mistresses; once, when he came by to drop off our monthly envelope, there was a woman in the car waiting for him down in the street. There were scenes, arguments, and my father stopped paying, or maybe he began paying less and less. My mother worked as a cleaning woman and she gradually went half-mad, not crazy enough to be shut away, but she’d go up to people and pour out her troubles, and she used to roam the streets in tears …

  ‘I hardly ever saw my brother. I was off running with the local kids. They must have hauled us in to the police station ten times. Then I was sent to work in a hardware store. My mother was always crying, so I stayed away from home as much as I could. She liked all the old neighbour women to come over so she could wail her heart out with them.

  ‘I joined the army when I was sixteen and asked to be sent to the Congo, but I only lasted a month. For about a week I hid in Matadi, then I stowed away on a passenger steamer bound for Europe. I got caught, served some time, escaped and made it to France, where I worked at all sorts of jobs. I’ve gone starving hungry, slept in the market here at Les Halles.

  ‘I haven’t always been on the up and up, but I swear to you, I’ve buckled down and been clean for four years. I’m even married now! To a factory worker. She’s had to keep her job because I don’t earn much and sometimes there’s nothing for me …

  ‘I’ve never tried to go back to Belgium. Someone told me that my mother died in a lunatic asylum but that my father’s still alive. He never wanted to bother with us, though. He has a second family.’

  And the man gave a crooked smile, as if to apologize.

  ‘What about your brother?’

  ‘It was different with him: Jean was serious. He won a scholarship as a boy and went on to secondary school. When I left Belgium for the Congo he was only thirteen, and I haven’t seen him since. I heard news now and again, whenever I ran into anyone from Liège. Some people took an interest in him, and he went on to study at the university there. That was ten years ago … After that, any Belgians I saw told me they didn’t know anything about him, that he must have gone abroad, because he’d dropped out of sight.

  ‘It was a real shock to see the photograph, and especially to think that he’d died in Bremen, under a false name. You can’t have any idea … Me, I got off to a bad start, I messed up, did stupid things, but when I remember Jean, at thirteen … He was like me, but steadier, more serious, already reading poetry. He used to study all by himself at night, reading by the light of candle ends he got from a sacristan. I was sure he’d make it. Listen, even when he was little, he would never have been a street kid, not at any price – and the neighbourhood bad boys even made fun of him!

  ‘But me, I was always short of money, and I wasn’t ashamed to hound my mother for it. She used to go without to give me so
me … She adored us. At sixteen, you don’t understand! But now I can remember a time when I was mean to her simply because I’d promised some girl I’d take her to the movies … Well, my mother had no money. I cried, I threatened her! A charity had just got some medicines for her – and she went and sold them.

  ‘Can you understand? And now it’s Jean who’s dead, like that, up there, with someone else’s name! I don’t know what he did. I cannot believe he went down the same wrong road I did. You wouldn’t believe it either if you’d known him as a child …

  ‘Please, can you tell me anything?’

  But Maigret handed the man’s passport back to him and asked, ‘In Liège, do you know any Belloirs, Van Dammes, Janins, Lombards?’

  ‘A Belloir, yes: the father was a doctor, in our neighbourhood. The son was a student. But they were well-to-do, respectable people, out of my league.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘I’ve heard the name Van Damme before. I think there was a big grocery store in Rue de la Cathédrale by that name. Oh, it’s so long ago now …’ He seemed to hesitate.

  And then Armand Lecocq d’Arneville asked, ‘Could I see Jean’s body? Has it been brought here?’

  ‘It will arrive in Paris tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you sure that he really did kill himself?’

  Maigret looked away, disturbed by the thought that he was more than sure of it: he had witnessed the tragedy and been the unwitting cause of it.

  The other man was twisting his cap in his hands, shifting from one foot to the other, awaiting his dismissal. Lost within pale lids, his deep-set eyes with their pupils flecked grey like confetti reminded Maigret so poignantly of the humble, anxious eyes of the traveller from Neuschanz that within his breast the inspector felt a sharp pang that was very like remorse.

  6. The Hanged Men

  It was nine o’clock in the evening. Maigret was at home in Boulevard Richard-Lenoir in his shirt-sleeves, his collar off, and his wife was sewing when Lucas came in soaked from the downpour outside, shrugging the rain from his shoulders.

  ‘The man left town,’ he said. ‘Seeing as I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to follow him abroad …’

  ‘Liège?’

  ‘That’s it! You already knew? His luggage was at the Hôtel du Louvre. He had dinner there, changed and took the 6.19 Liège express. Single ticket, first class. He bought a whole slew of magazines at the station newsstand.’

  ‘You’d think he was trying to get underfoot on purpose!’ groused the inspector. ‘In Bremen, when I’ve no idea he even exists, he’s the one who shows up at the morgue, invites me to lunch and plain latches on to me. I get back to Paris: he’s here a few hours before or after I arrive … Probably before, because he took a plane. I go to Rheims; he’s already there. An hour ago, I decided to return to Liège tomorrow – and he’ll be there by this evening! And the last straw? He’s well aware that I’m coming and that his presence there almost amounts to an accusation against him.’

  Lucas, who knew nothing about the case, ventured a suggestion.

  ‘Maybe he wants to draw suspicion on himself to protect somebody else?’

  ‘Are you talking about a crime?’ asked Mme Maigret peaceably, without looking up from her sewing.

  But her husband rose with a sigh and looked back at the armchair in which he’d been so comfortable just a moment before.

  ‘How late do the trains run to Belgium?’

  ‘Only the night train is left, at 9.30. It arrives in Liège at around 6 a.m.’

  ‘Would you pack my bag?’ Maigret asked his wife. ‘Lucas, a little something? Help yourself, you know where everything is in the cabinet. My sister-in-law has just sent us some plum brandy, and she makes it herself, in Alsace. It’s the bottle with the long neck …’

  He dressed, removed clothing B from the yellow suitcase and placed it, well wrapped, in his travel bag. Half an hour later, he left with Lucas, and they waited outside for a taxi.

  ‘What case is this?’ Lucas asked. ‘I haven’t heard anything about it around the shop.’

  ‘I hardly know myself!’ the inspector exclaimed. ‘A very strange fellow died, in a way that makes no sense, right in front of me – and that incident is all tied up in the most ungodly tangle of events, which I’m attempting to figure out. I’m charging blindly at it like a wild boar and wouldn’t be surprised if I wound up getting my knuckles rapped … Here’s a taxi. Shall I drop you off somewhere?’

  It was eight in the morning when Maigret left the Hôtel du Chemin de Fer, across from Gare des Guillemins, in Liège. He’d taken a bath, shaved and was carrying a package containing not all of clothing B, just the suit jacket.

  He found Rue Haute-Sauvenière, a steep and busy street, where he asked for directions to Morcel’s. In the dim light of the tailor’s shop, a man in shirt-sleeves examined the jacket, turning it over and over carefully while questioning the inspector.

  ‘It’s old,’ he finally announced, ‘and it’s torn. That’s about all I can tell you.’

  ‘Nothing else comes to mind?’

  ‘Not a thing. The collar’s poorly cut. It’s imitation English woollen cloth, made in Verviers.’

  And then the man became more chatty.

  ‘You’re French? Does this jacket belong to someone you know?’

  With a sigh, Maigret retrieved the suit jacket as the man nattered on and at last wound up where he ought to have started.

  ‘You see, I’ve only been here for the past six months. If I’d made the suit in question, it wouldn’t have had time to wear out like that.’

  ‘And Monsieur Morcel?’

  ‘In Robermont!’

  ‘Is that far from here?’

  The tailor laughed, tickled by the misunderstanding.

  ‘Robermont, that’s our cemetery. Monsieur Morcel died at the beginning of this year, and I took over his business.’

  Back out in the street with his package under his arm, Maigret headed for Rue Hors-Château, one of the oldest streets in the city, where, at the far end of a courtyard, he found a zinc plaque announcing: Photogravure Centrale – Jef Lombard – Rapid results for work of all kinds.

  The windows had small panes, in the style of historic Liège, and in the centre of the courtyard of small, uneven paving stones was a fountain bearing the sculpted coat of arms of some great lord of long ago.

  The inspector rang. He heard footsteps coming down from the first floor, and an old woman peeked out from the ancient-looking door.

  ‘Just push it open,’ she said, pointing to a glazed door. ‘The workshop’s all the way at the end of the passage.’

  A long room, lit by a glass roof; two men in blue overalls working among zinc plates and tubs full of acids; a floor strewn with photographic proofs and paper smeared with thick, greasy ink.

  The walls were crowded with posters, advertisements, magazine covers.

  ‘Monsieur Lombard?’

  ‘He’s in the office, with a gentleman. Please come this way – and don’t get any ink on you! Take a left turn, then it’s the first door.’

  The building must have been constructed piecemeal; stairs went up and down, and doors opened on to abandoned rooms.

  The feeling was both antiquated and weirdly cheerful, like the old woman who’d greeted him downstairs and the atmosphere in the workroom.

  Coming to a shadowy corridor, the inspector heard voices and thought he recognized that of Joseph Van Damme. He tried in vain to make out the words, and when he took a few steps closer, the voices stopped. A man stuck his head out of the half-open door: it was Jef Lombard.

  ‘Is it for me?’ he called, not recognizing his visitor in the half-light.

  The office was smaller than the other rooms and furnished with two chairs, shelves full of photographic negatives and a table cluttered with bills, prospectuses and business letters from various companies.

  And perched on a corner of the table was Van Damme, who nodded vaguely in Maigret’s direction and then s
at perfectly still, scowling and staring straight ahead.

  Jef Lombard was in his work clothes; his hands were dirty, and there were tiny blackish flecks on his face.

  ‘May I help you?’

  He cleared papers off a chair, which he pushed over to his visitor, and then he looked around for the cigarette butt he’d left balanced on the edge of a wooden shelf now beginning to char.

  ‘Just some information,’ replied the inspector, without sitting down. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I’d like to know if, a few years ago, you ever knew a certain Jean Lecocq d’Arneville …’

  There was a quick, distinct change. Van Damme shuddered, but resisted turning towards Maigret, while Lombard bent abruptly down to pick up a crumpled paper lying on the floor.

  ‘I … may have heard that name before,’ murmured the photoengraver. ‘He … From Liège, isn’t he?’

  The colour had drained from his face. He moved a pile of plates from one spot to another.

  ‘I don’t know what became of him. I … It was so long ago …’

  ‘Jef! Jef, hurry!’

  It was a woman’s voice, coming from the labyrinth of stairs and corridors, and she arrived at the open door breathless from running, so excited that her legs were shaky and she had to wipe her face with a corner of her apron. Maigret recognized the old lady he’d seen downstairs.

  ‘Jef!’

  And he, now even whiter from emotion, his eyes gleaming, gasped, ‘Well?’

  ‘A girl! Hurry!’

  The man looked around, stammered something impossible to decipher and dashed out of the door.

  Alone with Maigret, Van Damme pulled a cigar from his pocket, lit it slowly, crushed out the match with his shoe. He wore the same wooden expression as in Maigret’s office: his mouth was set in the same hard line, and he ground his jaws in the same way.

  But the inspector pretended not to notice him and, hands in his pockets, pipe between his teeth, he began to walk around the office, examining the walls.

  Very little of the original wallpaper was still visible, however, because any space not taken up by shelves was covered with drawings, etchings, and paintings that were simply canvases on stretchers without frames, rather plodding landscapes in which the tree foliage and grass were of the same even, pasty green.