Friend of Madame Maigret Read online

  “The prisoner has an absolute right to choose any lawyer he likes, and if this question is asked again I shall be obliged to bring the matter up before the Bar Council.”

  “Bring it up then! Bring it up! It’s you I’m talking to, Steuvels. You haven’t answered me.

  “It wouldn’t have been at all surprising if you had mentioned the name of a famous barrister or lawyer, but that’s not the case.

  “In my office you didn’t consult any directory, you didn’t ask anybody any questions.

  “Maître Liotard doesn’t live in your neighborhood. I believe that until three weeks ago his name had never appeared in the papers.”

  “I protest!”

  “Please do. As for you, Steuvels, tell me whether, on the morning of the twenty-first, before my detective’s visit, you had ever heard of Maître Liotard. If you had, tell me when and where.”

  “Don’t answer.”

  The Fleming hesitated, his back hunched, watching Maigret through his thick glasses.

  “You refuse to answer? All right. I’ll ask you something else. Did you receive a telephone call on that same day, the twenty-first, during the afternoon, concerning Maître Liotard?”

  Frans Steuvels was still hesitating.

  “Or, if you prefer it, did you ring anybody up? I’m going to take you back to the atmosphere of that day, which had begun just like any other day. The sun was shining, and it was very mild, so you hadn’t lit your furnace. You were at work, facing your window, when my detective appeared and asked to inspect your premises on some pretext or other.”

  “So you admit that!” interrupted Liotard.

  “I admit it, Maître. It’s not you I’m interrogating.

  “You immediately realized that the police had their eye on you, Steuvels.

  “At that time there was a brown suitcase in your workshop, which was gone that evening when Inspector Lucas came with a search warrant.

  “Who phoned you? Whom did you warn? Who came to see you between the visits of Lapointe and Lucas?

  “I’ve had a check made of the list of people you ring up frequently, whose numbers you’ve written down on a pad. I checked your telephone directory myself. Liotard’s name does not appear among those of your clients either.

  “And yet he came to see you that day. Did you send for him or did someone you know send him to you?”

  “I forbid you to answer.”

  But the Fleming made a gesture of impatience.

  “He came on his own.”

  “You are referring to Maître Liotard, aren’t you?”

  Then the bookbinder looked at each of the men around him, and his eyes twinkled as if he took a certain personal delight in putting his lawyer in an embarrassing position.

  “Yes, Maître Liotard.”

  The latter turned to the police clerk, who was writing.

  “You have no right to record these answers, which have nothing to do with the case. I did, in fact, go to see Steuvels, whose reputation was known to me, to ask him if he could do a binding job for me. Is that correct?”

  “That’s correct.”

  Why on earth was a malicious little spark dancing in the bright pupils of the Fleming’s eyes?

  “It was actually about an ex libris with the family crest—yes, indeed, Monsieur Maigret, my grandfather was known as the Comte de Liotard and voluntarily stopped using his title when he lost all his money. So I wanted a family crest and came to Steuvels, whom I knew to be the best binder in Paris, though I had been told he was terribly busy.”

  “You didn’t talk to him about anything except your crest?”

  “Pardon me. It seems that you are now interrogating me. Monsieur le Juge, this is your office, and I have no intention of being taken to task by a member of the police. Even when it was my client who was concerned I had serious objections. But for a member of the Bar . . .”

  “Have you any other questions to put to Steuvels, chief inspector?”

  “No more, thank you.”

  It was funny. It still seemed to him that the bookbinder was not annoyed at what had happened and that he was even looking at him with newfound liking.

  As for the lawyer, he was sitting down again, picking up a file in which he pretended to be absorbed.

  “You’ll find me in any time you want me, Maître Liotard. Do you know my office? The last but one on the left, at the end of the corridor.”

  He smiled at Judge Dossin, who was not feeling very comfortable, and walked toward the little door that connects Police Headquarters with the Palais de Justice.

  The place was more of a beehive than ever, telephones in use behind every door, people waiting at every corner, inspectors rushing up and down the corridors.

  “I think there’s someone waiting for you in your office, chief inspector.”

  When he pushed the door open, he found Fernande alone with young Lapointe, who, sitting in Maigret’s place, was listening to her and taking notes. He stood up in some confusion. The bookbinder’s wife was wearing a beige belted gabardine raincoat and a hat of the same stuff, without a trace of stylishness.

  “How is he?” she asked. “Have you just seen him? Is he still up there?”

  “He’s getting on very well. He admits that Liotard called at the studio on the afternoon of the twenty-first.”

  “A more disturbing thing has just happened,” she said. “Please, you must take what I’m about to tell you seriously. This morning I left the rue de Turenne as usual to take his dinner to the Santé. You know the little enamel casseroles I put it in?

  “I took the métro at the Saint-Paul station and changed at the Châtelet. I’d bought a paper on the way because I hadn’t had time to read one.

  “There was a seat near the door. I sat down in it and began the article—you know the one I mean.

  “I had put the stack of casseroles on the floor beside me and I could feel the heat from them against my leg.

  “There must have been a train due to leave because a few stations before Montparnasse a lot of people got into the carriage, a good many of them had suitcases.

  “I was busy reading and not paying attention to what was going on around me when I got the impression that someone was touching my casseroles.

  “I just had time to see a hand trying to put the metal handle back in position.

  “I stood up, turning to face the person next to me. We were pulling in to Montparnasse, where I had to change. Nearly everybody was getting out.

  “I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to upset the whole thing and make his way out on to the platform before I could see him full face.

  “The food spilled all over the place. I’ve brought you the casseroles, which are practically empty, except for the bottom one.

  “Look at them for yourself. A strip of metal with a handle on top holds the stack together.

  “It can’t open by itself.

  “I’m sure somebody was following me and tried to slip some poison into the food meant for Frans.”

  “Take it to the laboratory,” said Maigret to Lapointe.

  “They may not find anything, because of course it was the top one they tried to put the poison in and it’s empty. Can’t you believe me just the same, chief inspector? You must have realized that I’ve been honest with you.”

  “Always?”

  “As far as possible. This time Frans’s life is at stake. They’re trying to get rid of him, and those dirty crooks wanted to use me without my knowing it.”

  Her bitterness was brimming over.

  “If only I hadn’t been so absorbed in my paper I might have had a good look at the man. The only thing I know is that he was wearing a raincoat just about the color of mine, and that his black shoes were worn.”

  “Young?”

  “Not very young. Not old either. Middle aged. Or rather a man of no particular age, if you know what I mean? There was a stain near the shoulder of his raincoat, I noticed it while he was getting away.”

 
“Tall? Thin?”

  “Rather small. Average height at the most. Looked like a rat if you want my opinion.”

  “And you’re sure you’ve never seen him before?”

  She thought for a moment.

  “No. He doesn’t suggest anything.”

  Then, changing her mind:

  “Now it’s coming back to me. I was just reading the article with the story of the lady with the little boy at the Hôtel Beauséjour. He made me think of one of those two men, the one the manageress said looked like the type that sells fancy postcards. You’re not laughing at me, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think I’m making it all up?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think they were trying to kill him?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Lapointe came back and said that the laboratory could not let them have a report for several hours.

  “Do you think he’d better stick to prison food?”

  “It would be safer.”

  “He’ll be wondering why I haven’t sent him his meal. I won’t see him till visiting hours in two days’ time.”

  She wasn’t crying, wasn’t making a fuss, but her dark eyes, deeply ringed, were full of anxiety and distress.

  “Come with me.”

  He winked at Lapointe, led her downstairs, through corridors that became more and more deserted the farther they went. With some trouble he opened a little window overlooking the yard, where a police van was waiting.

  “He’ll be down in a minute. Will you excuse me? There’s something I must attend to upstairs . . .”

  He made a gesture toward the attic floor.

  Incredulously she watched him, then took hold of the bars with both hands, trying to see as far as possible in the direction from which Steuvels was going to emerge.

  5

  It was restful, after leaving the offices where the doors banged incessantly behind inspectors and where all the telephones were ringing simultaneously, to make one’s way, up a permanently deserted staircase, to the attic floor of the Palais de Justice, where the laboratories and records were housed.

  It was already nearly dark, and in the badly lighted staircase, which was like some hidden stairway in a castle, Maigret was preceded by his own gigantic shadow.

  In a corner of an attic under the mansard roof, Moers, a green eyeshade on his forehead, his thick spectacles before his eyes, was working under a lamp that he would move closer to or farther away from his work by pulling a wire.

  This was someone who had not been to the rue de Turenne to question the locals, nor to drink Pernods and white wine in one of the three bars. He had never shadowed anyone in the street, nor spent the night keeping watch outside a closed door.

  He never got upset, didn’t turn irritable, yet perhaps tomorrow morning would find him still hunched over his desk. Once he had even spent three consecutive days and nights at it.

  Maigret, without saying a word, had drawn up a cane-bottomed chair, sat down near the inspector, and lighted his pipe, on which he was puffing gently. Hearing a rhythmic sound on a skylight above his head, he realized that the weather had changed and it had begun to rain.

  “Look at these, Chief,” Moers was saying, handing him, like a pack of cards, a stack of photographs.

  It was a magnificent job he had turned out, alone in his corner. From the vague specifications that he had been given he had somehow brought to life, endowed with personality, three people of whom almost nothing was known: the fat, dark foreigner, with the elegant clothes, the young woman with the white hat, and finally the accomplice who “looked like a man who sells fancy postcards.”

  To achieve this he had at his disposal hundreds of thousands of record cards, but he was certainly the only person who carried enough of their data in his head to be capable of the job he had just patiently achieved.

  The first batch, which Maigret was examining, contained around forty photographs of stout, well-groomed men, Greeks or Levantines in type, with sleek hair, rings on their fingers.

  “I’m not too pleased with those,” sighed Moers, as if he had been faced with selecting the ideal cast for a film. “You can give them a try anyhow. As far as I’m concerned, I like these better.”

  There were only about fifteen photos in the second batch, and every one of them made one feel like applauding, they bore such a resemblance to one’s mental picture of the person described by the manageress of the Beauséjour.

  Turning them over, Maigret learned the profession of the subjects. Two or three were racecourse tipsters. There was a pickpocket who was especially familiar to him because he had personally arrested him on a bus, and an individual who hung around the doors of big hotels touting for certain specialized establishments.

  A satisfied little spark was dancing in Moers’s eyes.

  “It’s amusing, isn’t it? I’ve hardly got anything on the woman, because our photos never show hats. But I’m keeping at it.”

  Maigret, who had slipped the photographs into his pocket, stayed a few minutes longer just because he felt like it, then, with a sigh, went on to the laboratory next door, where they were still working on the food contained in Fernande’s casseroles.

  They hadn’t found anything. Either the story was a complete fabrication for some purpose which he couldn’t guess, or they hadn’t had time to introduce the poison, or else it had been in the section that had all been spilled in the métro carriage.

  Maigret avoided going back through the Headquarters offices and came out into the rain on the Quai des Orfèvres, turned up his coat collar, walked toward the Pont Saint-Michel and had to hail about ten taxis before one stopped.

  “Place Blanche. Corner of the rue Lepic.”

  He felt out of sorts, dissatisfied with himself and with the way the case was going. He was particularly resentful of Philippe Liotard, who had forced him to abandon his usual methods and mobilize all the departments right at the start.

  Now too many people whom he couldn’t control personally were mixed up in the case, which seemed to be getting more and more complicated all by itself; new characters were appearing whom he knew almost nothing about and whose roles he couldn’t even guess at.

  On two occasions he had been tempted to go back to the very beginning of the inquiry, all on his own, slowly, deliberately, following his favorite method, but this was no longer possible, the machine was in motion, and there was no longer any way to stop it.

  He would have liked, for instance, to question the concierge again, the cobbler across the street, the old maid on the fourth floor. But what was the use? Everybody had questioned them by now, inspectors, journalists, amateur detectives, people in the street. Their statements had been published in the papers, and they couldn’t go back on them now. It was like a trail that has been heedlessly trampled on by fifty people.

  “Do you think the bookbinder’s a murderer, Monsieur Maigret?”

  It was the driver, who had recognized him and was questioning him as if they were on familiar terms.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If I were you I’d pay particular attention to the little boy. That seems to me the best lead, and I’m not saying that just because I have a kid his age.”

  Even the taxi drivers were taking part in it! He got out at the corner of the rue Lepic and went into the bar on the corner for a drink. The rain was streaming in big drops from the awning around the terrace, where a few women were sitting as rigid as waxworks. He knew most of them. Some of them probably took their clients to the Hotel Beauséjour.

  There was even one, a very fat woman, blocking the doorway of the hotel, and she smiled, thinking he wanted her, then recognized him and apologized.

  He went up the badly lighted stairs, found the manageress in the office, dressed this time in black silk with gold-rimmed spectacles, her hair a flaming red.

  “Please sit down. Will you ex
cuse me a moment?

  “A towel for Number 17, Emma!”

  She came back.

  “Have you found anything new?”

  “I’d like you to examine these photos carefully.”

  First he handed her the pictures of the handful of women Moers had picked out. She looked at them one by one, shaking her head every time, and passed the batch back to him.

  “No. That’s not the type at all. She’s more refined than these women anyway. Perhaps not exactly refined. What I mean is ’respectable.’ You know what I’m getting at? She looks like a decent little woman, whereas the ones you’ve shown me might be women who come to this hotel.”

  “What about these?”

  These were the dark-haired men. She still shook her head.

  “No. That’s not it at all. I don’t know how to explain to you. These look too much like dagoes. Monsieur Levine, you know, could have stayed at a big hotel in the Champs-Élysées without being conspicuous.”

  “And these?”

  He handed her the last batch, sighing, and the moment she came to the third photograph she stiffened, cast a furtive little glance at the chief inspector. Was she reluctant to speak out?

  “Is that him?”

  “It may be. Wait till I take it to the light.”

  A girl was coming upstairs, with a client who kept to the darkest part of the staircase.

  “Take Number 17, Clémence. The room’s just been done.”

  She shifted her spectacles on her nose.

  “I’d swear it’s him, yes. It’s a pity he can’t move. If I saw him walk, even from behind, I’d know him at once. But it’s very unlikely that I’m mistaken.”

  On the back of the photograph Moers had written a résumé of the man’s career. Maigret noted with interest that he was probably a Belgian, like the bookbinder. Probably, for he was known under several different names, and his true identity had never been established.

  “Thank you.”

  “I hope you’ll give me credit for this. I could very well have pretended not to recognize him. After all, they may be dangerous, and I’m taking a big risk.”