Madame Maigret's Friend Read online

  ‘Turn left. Go via Place des Vosges and Rue de Birague.’

  That took him past the Tabac des Vosges, where Alfonsi was sitting alone at a table near the window.

  ‘Are you getting out?’

  ‘Yes, but I’d like you to wait.’

  In the end, he went into the Grand Turenne to have a word with Janvier.

  ‘Alfonsi’s opposite. Have you seen any reporters this morning?’

  ‘Two or three.’

  ‘Do you know them?’

  ‘Not all of them.’

  ‘Will you be busy for long?’

  ‘It’s nothing important. And if you have anything else you want me to do, I’m free. I wanted to talk to the cobbler.’

  They had moved sufficiently far from the group and were talking in low voices.

  ‘An idea occurred to me earlier after reading that item. Obviously, the man talks a lot. He’s determined to be an important person, and he’d make things up if he had to. Not to mention that every time he says something, he gets a few drinks out of it. As he lives just opposite the bookbinder’s and also works by the window, I asked him if Steuvels ever had any women visitors.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Not many. The one he particularly remembers is an old lady. She must be rich because she comes in a limousine with a liveried chauffeur who leaves her books there. But then, about a month ago, there was a very elegant woman in a fur coat. I made sure to ask if she’d only come the once. He says no, she came back about two weeks ago, in a blue tailored suit and a white hat. It was a day when the weather was very good and there was apparently an article in the newspaper about the chestnut tree on Boulevard Saint-Germain.’

  ‘We can find it.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Did she go down into the basement?’

  ‘No. But I’m a bit suspicious. It’s obvious he also read this morning’s article, and it’s quite possible he’s making this up to draw attention to himself. What would you like me to do?’

  ‘Keep your eye on Alfonsi. Stay with him all day. Make a list of the people he talks to.’

  ‘And he mustn’t know that I’m following him?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if he knows.’

  ‘What if he talks to me?’

  ‘Answer him.’

  Maigret left with the smell of Pernod in his nostrils and his taxi dropped him at the Quai, where he found Lucas having sandwiches for lunch. There were two glasses of beer on the desk and Maigret shamelessly took one.

  ‘Torrence has just phoned. The postmistress thinks she remembers a female customer in a white hat, but can’t say for sure she was the one who handed in the telegram. According to Torrence, even if she was sure, she wouldn’t say.’

  ‘Is he on his way back?’

  ‘He’ll be in Paris tonight.’

  ‘Would you mind calling the municipal taxi office? There’s another taxi to find, maybe two.’

  Had Madame Maigret, who had another appointment with the dentist, left early, like the other days, to spend a few minutes on the bench in Square d’Anvers?

  Maigret didn’t go home for lunch. Tempted by Lucas’ sandwiches, he had some sent up to him from the Brasserie Dauphine.

  That was usually a good sign.

  4.

  Fernande’s Adventure

  Red-eyed and haggard, like someone who’d slept on a bench in a third-class waiting room, young Lapointe had such a look of distress on his face when Maigret walked into the inspectors’ office that he immediately drew the boy into his.

  ‘The whole Hôtel Beauséjour story is in the paper,’ Lapointe said glumly.

  ‘So much the better! I would have been disappointed if it wasn’t.’

  So it had been deliberate on Maigret’s part, talking to him as if he were a veteran, someone like Lucas or Torrence, for instance.

  ‘These are people we know almost nothing about, not even if they really were involved in the case. There’s a woman, a little boy, a rather large man, and another who’s rather seedy-looking. Are they still in Paris? We have no idea. If they are, they’ve probably split up. If the woman takes off her white hat and separates from the boy, we’ll never recognize her. Are you following me?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I think I understand. All the same, I find it hard to believe that my sister went and saw that young man again last night.’

  ‘You can deal with your sister later. Right now, you’re working with me. This morning’s article is going to scare them. One of two things will happen: either they’ll stay in their hole, if they have one, or they’ll look for a safer hideout. Whatever the case, our one chance is for them to do something to give themselves away.’

  ‘Yes.’

  At that moment, Judge Dossin phoned to express his surprise at the newspaper’s revelations, and Maigret had to explain his reasoning all over again.

  ‘Everyone’s been alerted, your honour, the stations, the airports, the hotels squad, the traffic police. Upstairs in Records, Moers is looking for photographs that might correspond to these people. We’re questioning the taxi-drivers and, in case our characters have a car, the garage owners.’

  ‘You really think there’s a connection with the Steuvels case?’

  ‘It’s a lead. We’ve had so many that have got us nowhere.’

  ‘I’ve summoned Steuvels for eleven o’clock this morning. His lawyer will be there as usual. He won’t let me say two words to his client without his being there.’

  ‘Is it OK if I come up for a moment while you’re questioning him?’

  ‘Liotard will object, but come up anyway. As long as it doesn’t look premeditated.’

  The strange thing was that Maigret hadn’t yet met this Liotard, even though he’d become something like his personal enemy, in the press anyway.

  Once again this morning, all the newspapers had published the young lawyer’s comments on the latest developments in the case.

  Maigret is a policeman of the old school, from a time when those gentlemen in the Quai des Orfèvres could happily beat a man up until he was so exhausted he confessed, keep him in custody for weeks on end, and delve shamelessly into people’s private lives, a time when all kinds of tricks were considered fair.

  He is the only one who has not realized that these days such tricks are all too familiar to an informed public.

  What does this whole case boil down to?

  He has let himself be led astray by an anonymous letter, the work of a practical joker. He has had an honest man locked up but still has not managed to bring any serious charges against him.

  He is stubborn. Rather than admit defeat, he is trying to gain time, to please the gallery, even bringing Madame Maigret into it and presenting the public with episodes from a cheap novel.

  Believe me, gentlemen, Maigret is a man who has outlived his time!

  ‘Stay with me, son,’ Maigret said to young Lapointe. ‘Just make sure that before you leave this evening, you ask me what you can tell your sister, all right?’

  ‘I’ll never tell her anything again.’

  ‘You’ll tell her what I ask you to tell her.’

  Lapointe was now serving as his adjutant. This was all too appropriate, as the Police Judiciaire was becoming ever more like a military headquarters.

  Lucas’ office, the Grand Turenne, remained the command post, with couriers arriving from all the other departments. Downstairs, several officers from the hotels squad we
re going through their records in search of a Levine or anything connected with the trio and the child.

  The previous night, in most rooming houses the guests had had the unpleasant surprise of being woken by the police and having their documents examined. The operation had ended with some fifty men and women whose papers weren’t in order finishing the night in the cells at headquarters, where they were now waiting in line to be measured and photographed.

  In the railway stations, travellers were being given the once-over without their realizing it, and two hours after the newspapers had appeared the telephone calls began, soon coming in so thick and fast that Lucas had to assign an inspector to help him.

  People had seen the boy everywhere, in the most diverse corners of Paris and the suburbs, some in the company of the woman in the white hat, others with the man with the foreign accent.

  Passers-by would suddenly rush up to a policeman.

  ‘Come quickly! The boy’s on the corner of the street.’

  Everything was checked, everything had to be checked if they didn’t want to miss their chance. Three inspectors had set off early to question the garage owners.

  And all night, men from the vice squad had been joining in. Hadn’t the manageress of the Beauséjour said that her guest didn’t usually get back before one in the morning?

  In order to find out if he was a regular in nightclubs, they had questioned the barmen and the hostesses.

  And now Maigret, after the daily report in the chief’s office, was coming and going throughout the building, almost always accompanied by Lapointe: downstairs to the hotels squad, upstairs to see Moers in Records, listening to a phone call here, a statement there.

  It was just after ten o’clock when a driver from the municipal taxi office phoned. He hadn’t called earlier because he’d been out of town, all the way to Dreux, driving a sick old lady who didn’t want to take the train.

  It was he who had picked up the young woman and the little boy in Place Saint-Augustin. He remembered them well.

  ‘Where did you drive them?’

  ‘To the corner of Rue Montmartre and the Grands Boulevards.’

  ‘Was someone waiting for them there?’

  ‘I didn’t see anyone.’

  ‘Do you know which way they went?’

  ‘I lost sight of them in the crowd.’

  There were several hotels in the vicinity.

  ‘Call the hotels squad again!’ Maigret said to Lapointe. ‘They need to take a thorough look at the area around the Carrefour Montmartre. You understand now, don’t you? If they don’t panic, if they don’t move, we have no chance of finding them.’

  Torrence was back from Concarneau, but had gone straight to Rue de Turenne, to get back into the atmosphere, as he put it.

  As for Janvier, he had sent in his report and was still tailing Alfonsi.

  The previous evening, Alfonsi had met up with Philippe Liotard in a restaurant in Rue Richelieu, where they’d had a good dinner and a quiet chat. They had later been joined by two women, neither of them looking anything like the young woman in the white hat. One was Liotard’s secretary, a tall blonde who looked like a starlet. The other had left with Alfonsi.

  They had gone together to the cinema, near the Opéra, then to a cabaret in Rue Blanche where they had stayed until two in the morning.

  After which Alfonsi had taken his companion to the hotel in Rue de Douai where he lived.

  Janvier had taken a room in the same hotel. He had just phoned.

  ‘They aren’t up yet. I’m still waiting.’

  Just before eleven, Lapointe was to discover, as he followed Maigret, some parts of the Quai des Orfèvres he didn’t know. They had been walking along a deserted corridor on the ground floor, whose windows looked out on the courtyard, when Maigret stopped at a corner and motioned to him to be quiet.

  A Black Maria was just entering the courtyard, passing under the arch of the section where the cells were. Three or four gendarmes were waiting, smoking their cigarettes. Two others got out of the Black Maria. The first person they brought out was a big brute of a fellow with a low forehead, handcuffs on his wrists. Maigret didn’t know him, had never had dealings with him.

  Then came a frail-looking old woman who could have been a chair attendant in a church, but whom he had arrested at least twenty times as a pickpocket. She followed her gendarme like a regular, scampering along in her overlarge skirts, heading straight for the area where the examining magistrates had their offices.

  The sun was bright, the air blue in the patches of shadow. There was an occasional breath of spring, and a few flies were already buzzing about.

  They saw Frans Steuvels’ red hair. He wasn’t wearing any hat or cap, and his suit was somewhat rumpled. He stopped, as if surprised by the sunlight, and you could see his half-closed eyes behind his big glasses. He was handcuffed, just like the brute: the regulation had been strictly observed ever since some prisoners had escaped from that same courtyard, the last one through the corridors of the Palais de Justice itself.

  With his round back and slack figure, Steuvels was the very image of those intellectual artisans who read everything they can get their hands on and have no other passion besides their work.

  One of the guards handed him a lighted cigarette and he thanked him and took a few satisfied puffs, filling his lungs with air and tobacco smoke.

  He must have been behaving himself, because they were gentle with him, giving him time to relax before leading him towards the building. For his part, he didn’t seem to bear any grudge towards his guards, displayed no resentment, no emotion.

  There was a small basis of truth in the interview Maître Liotard had given. At other times, Maigret would have pursued his investigation to the end before handing the man over to the examining magistrate.

  In fact, if Liotard hadn’t come running after the first interrogation, Maigret would have seen Steuvels again several times, and would have had the opportunity to study him.

  He barely knew him, having been alone with him for a mere ten or twelve hours, at a time when he didn’t yet know anything about him or the case.

  Rarely had he been confronted with a suspect so calm, so self-possessed, and who was clearly not putting it on.

  Steuvels had waited for the questions, head bowed, with the air of wanting to understand, and he had looked at Maigret as he might have looked at a lecturer presenting complicated ideas.

  Then he had taken the time to think and when he had spoken, it was in a soft, slightly muffled voice, in sentences that were meticulous but unaffected.

  He hadn’t lost patience, like most people Maigret interrogated, and, when the same question came back for the twentieth time, he had replied in the same terms, with remarkable tranquillity.

  Maigret would have liked to get to know him better, but for the past three weeks the man hadn’t belonged to him any more; he had belonged to Judge Dossin, who would summon him, along with his lawyer, twice a week on average.

  Deep down, Steuvels must have been a shy man. The oddest part of it was that Judge Dossin was a shy man, too. Seeing the initial G. in front of his name, Maigret had ventured one day to ask him his first name, and the tall, distinguished magistrate had blushed.

  ‘Don’t repeat this, because they’d start calling me “the angel”, just as my classmates did at school, and then my fellow students at law school. My first name is Gabriel.’

  ‘Right,’ Maigret said now to Lapointe. ‘You’re going to wait for me in my office
and take any call that comes in.’

  He didn’t go straight upstairs, but roamed the corridors for a while with his pipe between his teeth and his hands in his pockets, like a man who feels at home, shaking a hand here, a hand there.

  When he judged that the interrogation must already be in progress, he went to the magistrates’ section and knocked at Judge Dossin’s door.

  ‘May I?’

  ‘Come in, Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.’

  A man had stood up. He was short and thin, very thin, with an overly studied elegance, and Maigret recognized him immediately from having seen photographs of him in the newspapers. He was young, but assumed a self-important air to look older, affecting a confidence that didn’t fit his age.

  He was quite good-looking, with dark skin, black hair and long nostrils that sometimes quivered, and he looked people in the eyes as if determined to make them lower their gaze.

  ‘Monsieur Maigret, I presume?’

  ‘That’s correct, Maître Liotard.’

  ‘If it’s me you’re looking for, I’ll be pleased to speak to you after the interrogation.’

  Frans Steuvels had remained seated opposite the judge, waiting. He had merely glanced at Maigret, then at the clerk who sat at the end of the desk with his pen in his hand.

  ‘I’m not looking for you in particular. As it happens, I’m looking for a chair.’

  He took one by the back and sat down astride it, still smoking his pipe.

  ‘Do you intend to stay here?’

  ‘Unless the examining magistrate asks me to leave.’

  ‘Stay, Maigret.’

  ‘I protest. If the interrogation is to continue in these conditions, then I must express my reservations. The presence of a police officer in this office is evidently meant to intimidate my client.’

  Maigret refrained from murmuring, ‘Just keep singing!’ but gave the young lawyer an ironic look. Liotard clearly didn’t believe a word he was saying. It was all part of his strategy. At every interrogation so far, he had raised points of law, for the most trivial or extravagant of reasons.