Maigret's Patience Read online

  She moved towards the bottle of bourbon that was standing on a table.

  ‘Do you drink?’

  He did drink and listened to her gibberish for ten minutes or so, wondering if she would ever cover up her breasts.

  ‘The Clou Doré? … No … Never been … But in the States all the nightclubs are owned by gangsters … Was Palmari being a gangster?’

  As Maigret moved from one floor to the next, it was as if he was passing through a sort of Paris in miniature, with the same contrasts as when you go from one neighbourhood or street to another.

  The American woman lived in the midst of bohemian chaos. The apartment opposite was all soft furnishings, with an odour of sweets and jam. A white-haired man was sleeping in an armchair, a newspaper draped over his lap.

  ‘Don’t speak too loudly. He hates being woken up with a start. Are you collecting for charity?’

  ‘No. I’m from the police.’

  The old woman looked amazed.

  ‘Really! The police! And this is such a quiet building! Don’t tell me someone has been burgled.’

  She smiled, and her face was as gentle and benign as that of a sister of Saint Vincent de Paul under her wimple.

  ‘A serious crime? Is that why there were all these comings and goings this morning? No, inspector, I don’t know anyone, except the concierge.’

  The PE teacher on the third floor wasn’t at home either, but a young woman with her eyes full of sleep opened the door, wrapped in a blanket.

  ‘What? No. I don’t know when he’ll be back. I haven’t been here before.’

  ‘When did you meet him?’

  ‘Yesterday evening, or rather this morning, as it was past midnight. In a bar on Rue de Presbourg. What’s he done? He seemed like a decent guy to me.’

  There was little point in pursuing this. She could barely speak, as she was nursing a massive hangover.

  At the Massolettis, only the maid was in. She explained in very bad French that her mistress had gone to meet her husband at Fouquet’s, and they were going to dine together in town.

  Their apartment was more modern, lighter and brighter than the others in the building. There was a guitar lying on a sofa.

  On Palmari’s floor, Fernand Barillard hadn’t come home yet. The door was answered by a very blonde, plump woman of about thirty, who was humming.

  ‘Hey! I passed you on the stairs earlier. What are you selling?’

  ‘Police Judiciaire.’

  ‘Are you investigating what happened this morning?’

  ‘How do you know something happened?’

  ‘Your colleagues were making enough of a racket! I only had to open the door a little to hear their conversations. By the way, they have a funny way of talking about the dead, especially those who were cracking jokes as they carried the body downstairs.’

  ‘Did you know Manuel Palmari?’

  ‘I’ve never seen him but have sometimes heard him bellowing.’

  ‘Bellowing? What do you mean?’

  ‘He can’t have been easy to live with. It’s understandable, the concierge told me he was an invalid. But he used to get so angry! …’

  ‘With Aline?’

  ‘She’s called Aline? A strange woman. At first, whenever I passed her on the stairs, I’d nod hello, but she would just look right through me. What sort of person is she? Were they married? Did she kill him?’

  ‘What time does your husband go to work?’

  ‘It depends. He doesn’t keep fixed hours like an office worker.’

  ‘Does he come home for lunch?’

  ‘Rarely, as he is mostly working in another part of town or out in the suburbs. He is a commercial traveller.’

  ‘I know. What time did he leave this morning?’

  ‘I’m not sure, because I went out very early to do my shopping.’

  ‘What do you mean by “very early”?’

  ‘Around eight o’clock. When I got back, at nine thirty, he had gone.’

  ‘Did you bump into your neighbour when you were out?’

  ‘No. We probably don’t shop in the same places.’

  ‘Have you been married long?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  Dozens and dozens of questions, and just as many replies for Maigret to log in his memory. And from this pile, a few, maybe just one, would become significant at some point.

  The barman was home, because he wasn’t due to begin work until six o’clock. The maid and the two children were in the first room, which had been transformed into a play room. A small child tugged on Maigret and shouted:

  ‘Bang! Bang! You’re dead.’

  Tony Pasquier, whose hair was thick and coarse, was shaving himself for the second time that day. His wife was sewing a button back on to a pair of child’s trousers.

  ‘What name did you say? Palmari? Should I know him?’

  ‘He’s your downstairs neighbour, or rather he was, up until this morning, your downstairs neighbour.’

  ‘Has something happened to him? I passed some policemen on the stairs and when I got back at two thirty my wife told me they had taken away a body.’

  ‘Have you ever been to the Clou Doré?’

  ‘Not personally, but I’ve sometimes sent customers there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Some of them ask for decent places to eat in a particular neighbourhood. The Clou Doré has a good reputation. I used to know the maître d’, Pernelle, who worked in Claridge’s. He knows his stuff.’

  ‘Don’t you know who owns the place?’

  ‘I’ve never bothered to find out.’

  ‘And the woman, Aline Bauche, have you ever met her?’

  ‘The girl with the dark hair and the tight dresses I’ve seen on the stairs?’

  ‘She’s your landlady.’

  ‘That’s news to me. I’ve never even spoken to her. What about you, Lulu?’

  ‘I hate her type.’

  ‘You see, Monsieur Maigret. Not much for you here. Maybe you’ll have better luck another time.’

  The Englishman wasn’t at home. On the sixth floor, Maigret found a long corridor where the only illumination was from a skylight. On the courtyard side there was a huge attic where the tenants piled up their junk: old trunks, dressmakers’ dummies, boxes and bits of flea market bric-à-brac.

  On the front side of the building was a line of doors, like in a barracks. The door at the end was Yolande’s, the maid of the tenants on the second floor. It was open, and he noticed a see-through nightdress lying on an unmade bed and sandals on the rug.

  The next door, Amélia’s according to the plan that Maigret had sketched in his notebook, was shut. So was the following one.

  When he knocked on the fourth door, a weak voice told him to come in, and through all the birdcages that filled the room he could see a moon-faced old woman sitting in a Voltaire armchair next to the window.

  He almost went out again, to leave her to her reverie. She was practically ageless, connected to this world only by a slender thread; she looked at the intruder with a serene smile.

  ‘Come in, my dear sir. Don’t be afraid of my birds.’

  He hadn’t been told that, apart from the canaries, she had a huge parrot, not caged but perched on a seesaw in the middle of the room. The bird started screeching:

  ‘Polly! … Pretty Polly! … Are you hungry, Polly?’

  He explained that he was from the police and that a crime had been committed in the building.

  ‘I know, my dear sir. The concierge told me when I went to do my shopping. It’s so sad that we kill each other when life is so short anyway! It’s like in the wars. My father fought in 1870 and in 1914. I’ve lived through two wars myself.’

  ‘Did you know Monsieur Palmari?’

  ‘Neither him nor anyone else, apart from the concierge, who isn’t as bad as you might think. The poor woman has had her problems in life. Her husband was a womanizer, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, a drinker.’

  ‘Hav
e you ever heard any tenant come up to this floor?’

  ‘Every now and again someone comes up to fetch something from the attic or put something away. But my window’s always open, and my birds are always singing, so …’

  ‘Do you see your next-door neighbour?’

  ‘Monsieur Jef? You would think we were the same age. In fact, he is much younger than me. He can’t be much more than seventy. He just seems older because of his wounds. Have you met him too? He is deaf and dumb, and I sometimes wonder if that isn’t worse than being blind.

  ‘People say the blind are happier folk than the deaf. I’ll find out soon enough, as my eyesight is getting worse each day. I’d be unable to describe your face. I can only make out a light patch amid shadows. Won’t you take a seat?’

  Finally, the old man, who, when Maigret arrived, was reading a children’s comic. His face was covered in scars, one of which ran upwards from the corner of his mouth, which made it look like he had a permanent smile on his face.

  He wore tinted blue glasses. In the middle of the room a large white-wood table was covered in various odds and ends, unexpected objects, a small boy’s Meccano set, pieces of carved wood, old magazines, a lump of clay that the old man had fashioned into some unidentifiable animal.

  The iron bed looked like something in a barracks, as did the rough blanket, and on the whitewashed walls were hung posters representing sun-kissed cities: Nice, Naples, Istanbul … More magazines were piled up on the floor. With his hands, which weren’t trembling, despite his age, the man tried to signal that he was deaf and dumb, that he couldn’t speak, and Maigret responded with a gesture of helplessness. Then the man indicated that he could lip-read.

  ‘Excuse me for disturbing you. I’m from the police. Did you by any chance know a tenant here called Palmari?’

  Maigret pointed at the floor to indicate that Palmari lived down below, then raised two fingers to represent the number of floors. Old Jef shook his head, and Maigret asked him about Aline.

  As far as he could gather, the old man had met her on the stairs. He described her in a somewhat droll manner, sculpting in thin air, as it were, the shape of her narrow face and her curvaceous, slim body.

  When he got back to the fourth floor, Maigret felt as if he had visited a whole cross-section of humanity. He was more weighed down, a little sad. Manuel’s death in his wheelchair had barely caused a ripple; there were people here who had lived just the width of a wall, ceiling or floor away from him for years and weren’t even aware he had been carried away under a sheet.

  Lucas wasn’t playing cards. Aline wasn’t in the living room.

  ‘I think she’s asleep.’

  Young Lapointe was there, thrilled to be on duty with the chief.

  ‘I took a car. Was that all right?’

  ‘Any beer left, Lucas?’

  ‘Two bottles.’

  ‘Open one for me, and I’ll have half a dozen delivered.’

  It was six o’clock. The traffic jams were beginning to form across Paris, and a driver was beeping impatiently, contrary to regulations, beneath the windows of the apartment building.

  4.

  The Clou Doré on Rue Fontaine was flanked on one side by a third-rate strip club and on the other by a lingerie shop specializing in high-end women’s underwear that foreigners took home with them as souvenirs of ‘Gay Paree’.

  Maigret and Lapointe had parked the police car on Rue Chaptal and were walking slowly up the street, where the people of the daytime were beginning to be supplanted by the altogether different-looking denizens of the night.

  It was seven o’clock. The bouncer, whom everyone called Jo Muscles, wasn’t yet at his post at the door of the restaurant, in his blue uniform with gold braid.

  Maigret tried to locate him. He knew him well. He had the appearance of a former fairground boxer, though he had never actually pulled on boxing gloves. Aged around forty, he had spent half his life in the twilight, firstly as a minor in a reformatory, then in prison for spells of between six months and two years, for mindless thefts or for assault and battery.

  He had the intelligence of a ten-year-old and when he encountered some unforeseen situation, he had a vague, almost pleading look in his eyes, like a schoolboy being tested by a teacher on a subject he hasn’t swotted up on.

  They would find him inside, in his livery, wiping down the tan leather banquettes with a cloth, and as soon as he spotted Maigret his face was as expressive as a wooden head.

  The two waiters were busy laying the tables, setting out plates with the restaurant’s crest on them, glasses and silver cutlery, as well as a centrepiece, a crystal flute containing a pair of flowers.

  The lamps with pink shades weren’t lit yet, as the pavement opposite was still bathed in golden sunlight.

  The barman, Justin, in a white shirt and black tie, was giving the glasses a last quick wipe, and the only customer, a fat man with a red face, sat on a high stool drinking a crème de menthe.

  Maigret had seen him somewhere. His face looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him straight away. Had he come across him at the races, here even, or at his office in Quai des Orfèvres?

  Montmartre was full of people he had had dealings with, sometimes many years earlier, who would disappear off the scene for a length of time, maybe for a stint in Fontevrault or Melun, or otherwise make themselves scarce until they had been forgotten about.

  ‘Good evening, detective chief inspector. Good evening, inspector,’ Justin said casually. ‘If you’re here for dinner you’re a little early. What can I get you?’

  ‘Beer.’

  ‘Dutch, Danish, German?’

  The manager emerged silently from the back room. He was almost bald, with a pale, somewhat puffy face and purple bags under his eyes.

  Showing no surprise or obvious emotion, he came towards the policemen, offered Maigret a limp hand, then gripped Lapointe’s, before leaning against the bar, without taking a seat. He had only his dinner jacket to put on before being ready to receive his customers.

  ‘I was expecting to see you today. I’m even a bit surprised you didn’t come earlier. What do you think of all this?’

  He seemed tormented or in the grip of sadness.

  ‘Think of all what?’

  ‘Somebody got to him in the end. Do you have any idea who pulled the trigger?’

  So, even though Manuel’s death wasn’t in the papers yet, even though Aline had remained under surveillance all day and hadn’t made a single telephone call, the news had reached the Clou Doré.

  If a policeman from the Ternes district had talked, it would have been to a reporter and in confidence. As for the tenants in the building, none of them seemed to have any connection with the Montmartre crowd.

  ‘How long have you known, Jean-Loup?’

  Jean-Loup was the first name of the manager, who also doubled as the maître d’. The police had nothing on him. Originally from the Allier, he had started out as a waiter in Vichy. He had married young and had children: his son was studying at medical school, and one of his daughters had married the owner of a restaurant on the Champs-Élysées. He led a respectable life in a villa he had had built in Choisy-le-Roi.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he replied in surprise. ‘Why do you ask me that? I thought everyone knew.’

  ‘The papers haven’t mentioned the crime. Try to remember. Did you already know at lunchtime?’

  ‘I think so, yes. The customers talk to us about all sorts of things! Can you remember, Justin?’

  ‘No. They were talking about it in the bar as well.’

  ‘Who?’

  Maigret was encountering the familiar code of silence. Even if Pernelle, the manager, wasn’t part of their world and led the most orderly of lives, he was no less bound to secrecy by some of his customers.

  The Clou Doré wasn’t the bar of former times, when it was full of villains, and Palmari, who ran the place then, didn’t need much persuading to give Maigret a tip-off.

  T
he restaurant had acquired a wealthy clientele. It attracted a fair number of foreigners, some pretty girls too, around ten or eleven at night, because dinner was served until midnight. A few gang leaders had stuck to their old ways, but they were no longer youngsters up for anything. They all owned houses now, most of them had wives and children.

  ‘I would like to know who first mentioned this to the pair of you.’

  And Maigret went fishing, to employ his own expression.

  ‘Could it have been a certain Massoletti?’

  He had had time to memorize the names of all the tenants in the building on Rue des Acacias.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Works in cars … Italian cars.’

  ‘Don’t know him. What about you, Justin?’

  ‘First time I’ve heard the name.’

  They both seemed to be telling the truth.

  ‘Vignon?’

  No hint of recognition in their eyes. They shook their heads.

  ‘A PE teacher called Destouches?’

  ‘Not known around here.’

  ‘Tony Pasquier?’

  ‘I know him,’ broke in Justin.

  ‘So do I,’ added Pernelle. ‘He sometimes sends me customers. He is second barman at Claridge’s, isn’t he? I haven’t seen him for months.’

  ‘Did he telephone today?’

  ‘He only telephones when he wants to especially recommend a customer.’

  ‘Was it maybe your bouncer who gave you the news?’

  The latter, who had heard them speak, spat on the ground in a show of disgust and muttered between his dentures:

  ‘It’s a disgrace.’

  ‘James Stuart, an Englishman? No? Fernand Barillard?’

  With each name the two men seemed to be racking their brains before shaking their heads again.

  ‘Who do you think might have had an interest in getting rid of Palmari?’

  ‘It’s not the first time someone’s had a go.’

  ‘Except that the two men who sprayed him with machine guns were bumped off themselves. And Palmari never left his apartment again. Tell me, Pernelle. How long ago was it that the Clou Doré changed hands?’

  A slight blush on the manager’s pale face.

  ‘Five days.’

  ‘And who is the current owner?’