Maigret Takes a Room Read online

Maigret understood Lucas’ look and his sigh.

  ‘Did you find anything in the flat?’

  Lucas set down a Belgian automatic on the desk. Paulus hadn’t been lying. It plainly wasn’t the gun that had been used to shoot Janvier. If van Damme hadn’t taken it with him, it was because he expected to cross the border, where he risked being searched.

  ‘She hasn’t an idea where he might be?’

  ‘She thinks he’s gone back to Belgium. He talked about it several times. He felt a bit lost in Paris, where they laughed at his accent.’

  Lucas held out a passport photograph, showing a fair-haired man with an almost square face and a protruding jaw, staring straight ahead like a soldier at attention. He looked more like a hitman from La Villette than a café waiter.

  ‘Pass that on to the Belgian police. They’ll probably find him roaming around the United States consulate.’

  ‘What does your kid say?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Was it him?’

  ‘He didn’t shoot Janvier.’

  ‘His father’s just arrived. He’s in the waiting room.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘An accountant, or a cashier. What do you want me to do with him?’

  ‘Keep him waiting.’

  Maigret went back into his room, where he found Paulus leaning against the window.

  ‘Can I have another cigarette? I don’t suppose you’ve got a glass of water?’

  ‘Sit down. Your father’s here.’

  ‘Are you going to force me to see him?’

  He had been calm until then; now there was panic in his eyes.

  ‘Are you afraid of him? Is he severe?’

  ‘No. It’s not that.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He doesn’t understand. It’s not his fault. He’s bound to be upset … Please …! Don’t bring him in now …’

  ‘You know what to expect?’

  ‘How long will I be put in jail for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I haven’t killed anyone. It was a toy gun. I haven’t even spent my share of the money. You must have found it.’

  He had said it quite naturally: ‘my share’.

  ‘You could still be looking at five years. And after that you’ll be sent to the African Battalions.’

  That didn’t trouble him. He was only worried about the impending meeting with his father.

  He wasn’t trying to inspire pity. He didn’t understand why Maigret, who had no child, who would have loved to have a son, was looking at him anxiously.

  What kind of man would he be, what future would he have, when he came out of the African Battalions – if he ever did come back?

  ‘You’re an idiot, Paulus!’ Maigret sighed. ‘If I knew your father would give you a good slap I’d bring him in right away.’

  ‘He’s never beaten me in my life.’

  ‘Shame.’

  ‘He cries. It’s worse!’

  ‘I’m sending you to the cells. Do you know a lawyer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your father will probably appoint one. Come this way …’

  ‘Aren’t we going to see him?’

  ‘No. Put out your cigarette.’

  And Maigret handed him over to Lucas, who was in charge of formalities.

  The half-hour with his father was even more unpleasant. As Paulus had expected, he cried. And Maigret couldn’t bear to see a man crying either.

  ‘We’ve bent over backwards, inspector …’

  But of course! But of course! Maigret wasn’t accusing anyone. Everybody was doing their best. Unfortunately they couldn’t do much. Otherwise the Police Judiciaire probably wouldn’t exist.

  It remained the case that Janvier had been shot down on the pavement of Rue Lhomond, and that it was up to Maigret to find the perpetrator.

  To distract himself he went to have lunch with Lucas at the Brasserie Dauphine, where they sat on the terrace, at a table covered with a red checked tablecloth. It was the first time that year that he had eaten outside. He was distracted, preoccupied. Lucas, who sensed as much, hesitated before asking him:

  ‘Are you sure those two have nothing to do with the Janvier case, chief?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. Wait and see, they’ll find van Damme in Brussels, where he went as soon as he had some money in his pocket. As for Paulus, once the job was done he holed up in the house on Rue Lhomond and wouldn’t have come out for anything in the world. He felt safe at Mademoiselle Clément’s. He would have lived there for months if he’d been able to. He would only have had one reason to shoot at Janvier: to leave the way open for him to escape. But he didn’t escape. And I believe Mademoiselle Clément when she says that he was under the bed when the shot was fired, and that she was in her room.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ve just gone through Janvier’s desk again. I’ve examined every last piece of paper and reread the files on all the cases he’d been dealing with. It could have been an act of revenge.’

  But then again! It’s very rare for a criminal to take revenge on a policeman, even if he’s had him arrested. But Maigret intended to leave no stone unturned.

  ‘I’ve also got hold of the list of everyone who’s recently got out of prison. There’s not a single one who’s been arrested by Janvier or his deputy.’

  ‘Are you going to go back there?’

  ‘There’ clearly referred to Mademoiselle Clément’s house.

  Maigret didn’t answer straight away. He ate in silence, watching the shadows of the people walking along the pavement.

  ‘Who knew that Janvier would be on guard that night, on Rue Lhomond?’

  He was asking himself the question. It was Lucas who answered.

  ‘I didn’t even know,’ he said. ‘He arranged things as he wanted to with Vauquelin and the other inspectors.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe that someone would have gone down Rue Lhomond by chance, recognized Janvier and, for some reason, shot him. That person couldn’t have approached him so silently that Janvier didn’t even hear him arriving.’

  ‘I’m beginning to understand what you’re getting at.’

  ‘It wasn’t Janvier in person that they were after, that’s the essential point. It was the inspector who was on duty that evening, on the pavement of Rue Lhomond. Vauquelin, or anyone at all, would have been shot in the same way.’

  ‘Unless they mistook Janvier for someone else?’

  Maigret shrugged. He hesitated before ordering a glass of spirits with his coffee, and finally, in an act of protest against the previous day’s chartreuse, he asked for a calvados.

  ‘I’m going back to see Janvier. The doctor might let him speak now.’

  ‘Can I come with you? I’d like to say hello.’

  They went together. Madame Janvier hadn’t arrived yet. They didn’t have long to wait. This time, the inspector almost had a real beard, and he was more clear-eyed.

  ‘Don’t get him too worked up. The doctor allows him to say a few words in a low voice, but he has to remain calm.’

  Maigret straddled a chair, an unlit pipe in his mouth, while Lucas leaned against the window-sill.

  ‘We’ve arrested Paulus. Don’t say anything. I’ll fill you in briefly. He was hiding under Mademoiselle Clément’s bed.’

  And, as Janvier’s face expressed a kind of shame, Maigret added:

  ‘Don’t worry. I wouldn’t have thought of looking under that woman’s bed. Paulus is a choirboy. He wasn’t the one who shot at you; neither was his accomplice, a Belgian who has made himself scarce. Don’t move. Don’t talk. Wait for me to ask some questions and take the time to think.’

  Janvier gave a sign that he had understood.

  ‘I’ve thought of one possibility, although it’s not one I believe in. Imagine that in this case, or some other case, you had found a clue that might compromise someone, and that someone might have had the idea of killing you.’

  Janvier didn’t move for
a long time.

  ‘You’d done a few stakeouts in front of the house. Did you notice anything unusual?’

  ‘Nothing that’s not in the report.’

  Someone came to announce that Madame Janvier was here. This time she was allowed to spend a few minutes alone with her husband. She was embarrassed, in front of Maigret, of the bunch of violets she was holding.

  ‘Don’t worry, son. We’ll find him sooner or later.’

  Once he was outside with Lucas, he seemed less optimistic.

  ‘Someone shot Janvier. That’s a fact. The bullet didn’t fire itself, and somewhere there’s a bastard who pulled the trigger.’

  ‘Do you believe he’s still on Rue Lhomond?’

  Maigret didn’t believe anything at all. He hadn’t a clue. He was in a bad mood, and even spring no longer brought him any pleasure.

  ‘You can go back to headquarters. If anything happens, call me.’

  ‘At Mademoiselle Clément’s?’

  At such moments the chief inspector was touchier than usual. He glared at Lucas, as if he thought he was trying to be funny.

  ‘At Mademoiselle Clément’s, yes!’

  And, stuffing his pipe, he trudged heavily towards Rue Lhomond.

  ‘I was wondering if you’d come back.’

  ‘Well, I’ve come back.’

  ‘Have you put him in jail?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Are you angry?’

  ‘With whom?’

  ‘With me.’

  She didn’t realize either. She stood there, more of a china doll than ever, smiling at him shyly, but she was no more troubled than that.

  ‘You realize what you’ve done?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s a bad boy. He has a good heart.’

  ‘I should still charge you with concealing a criminal.’

  ‘Do you plan to do that?’

  It was almost as if she was amused, that she wanted to go to jail too, the way other people want to see Nice.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  He had no reason to go on standing in the sitting room, in fact. It was ridiculous. But he was angry with the fat woman, without really knowing why. He was sulking.

  ‘Are you hiding something from me?’

  ‘I can assure you that there’s no one left under my bed, if that’s what you mean. Nor in the wardrobes. You can search the house.’

  ‘Are you mocking me, Mademoiselle Clément?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so presumptuous, Monsieur Maigret.’

  ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘Because I think life is funny.’

  ‘And if my inspector had been killed, would that be funny too? He has a wife and two children, he’s expecting a third.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about that.’

  ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘About you.’

  He couldn’t find an answer. She was as candid, in her way, as that little fool Paulus.

  ‘Will you come upstairs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  But he didn’t go up straight away, and, remembering how thirsty he had been during the night, he went to the bistro opposite, where he had three glasses of beer one after the other, feeling as if he were getting his own back.

  ‘Did you find him?’ the Auvergnat asked.

  Maigret shot back:

  ‘Who?’

  And the man chose not to press the matter.

  This was a stretch of ordinary street, almost no passers-by, two pavements, some houses, a few hundred people who lived in these houses, men who left in the morning and came back in the evening, women doing their housework, children squealing, old men taking some fresh air at their windows or in their doorways.

  There was a big girl with a child’s face playing at keeping a rooming house, an old ham who gave singing lessons to little girls yearning for opera, a student dying of hunger and fighting against sleep in the hope of being able to hang a doctor or dentist’s plaque on his door; there was a lazy little slut who read novels all day in bed, where she received an old gentleman three times a week, and a young typist who was brought home at night in a taxi; there were the Lotards with their baby, the Safts, who were expecting one; Monsieur Kridelka, who looked like a baddie from a film and was probably the gentlest man in the world. There were …

  Good people, as Mademoiselle Clément said. People like there are everywhere, who had to find enough money to eat every day, and enough money to pay their rent every month.

  There were the neighbours: a man who had left home in the morning with the suitcase of a travelling salesman, a woman shaking her duster out of the window, and someone right at the top, under the roof, who kept the light on late into the night.

  What would he have found, going through the street with a fine-tooth comb? A majority of what are called honest people, in all likelihood. No rich people. A few poor ones. The odd shady character too, probably.

  But the murderer?

  The Auvergnat frowned as he heard Maigret, still holding his glass of beer, distractedly ordering:

  ‘A white wine.’

  Perhaps he had forgotten that he had just had three glasses of beer? Perhaps he thought it didn’t count, that it was just the arrears of the night before? Perhaps, quite simply, he was thinking about something else?

  The barman preferred to say nothing, hurried to pick up the bottle and filled a stemmed glass.

  When Maigret crossed the street a little later, he watched after him, shaking his head, and muttered:

  ‘He’s a strange one!’

  Because we’re all strange in someone’s eyes.

  5.

  In which Maigret takes copious notes to make himself believe that he’s working, and Mademoiselle Clément doesn’t always prove charitable

  She must have done it on purpose. It was her way of waging a kind of little war. While she might have been surprisingly light on her feet for her size, she had no reason to climb two storeys when she could easily have called up to him from the bottom of the stairs.

  Was it to stress that he was a heavy sleeper? In the morning, perhaps. Madame Maigret teased him about it too. But it wasn’t the case when he snoozed during the day. And yet, after knocking at the door, she opened it straight away, catching him fully dressed on his bed.

  ‘I beg your pardon. I thought you were busy working. You’re wanted on the telephone.’

  She wasn’t being mean. On the contrary. She looked at him with eyes that sparkled with good humour and even with affection.

  It was a matter between the two of them, which other people couldn’t understand. Maigret refused to talk to her. It was as simple as that. It had been going on for two days now. He left the house and came back at least ten times a day. Each time he did so she made sure that she appeared in front of him, with a pout that seemed to say:

  ‘So, friends again?’

  And yet he pretended not to see her, or responded to her overtures with a grunt.

  For two days it had also been raining, with the occasional ray of sunlight that pierced the clouds.

  ‘Hello! It’s me, yes …’

  ‘Do you remember someone called Meyer, chief?’

  He was sure that she was listening to him, from the sitting room or the kitchen, and it was perhaps for her benefit that he gruffly replied:

  ‘There must be ten pages of Meyers in the phone book.’

  ‘The cashier from Boulevard des Italiens who scarpered. We’ve just had some information about him. The Dutch police found him in Amsterdam, with a young red-haired woman. What should we do?’

  It also seemed that he was deliberately staying away from Quai des Orfèvres. The house on Rue Lhomond had become something like a branch of the Police Judiciaire, and even the big chief himself sometimes had to contact Maigret by telephone.

  ‘Is that you, Maigret? The examining ma
gistrate is calling me about the Piercot case …’

  And no sooner had he hung up than Maigret seemed to immerse himself once again with voluptuous delight in the atmosphere of his little stretch of street.

  The cleaning woman with the men’s shoes was afraid of him, God knows why, and quickly got out of his way as soon as she heard his footsteps. The others also looked at him with a degree of embarrassment, indeed a certain unease, as if they felt that suspicions might fall on them at the drop of a hat.

  It was only Mademoiselle Clément, in fact, who didn’t take him seriously, and who smiled at him with the certainty that sooner or later his mask would fall.

  She discreetly paid him attention in lots of tiny ways. In the morning, without being asked, she set a cup of coffee down outside his door as soon as she heard him getting up. In the evening there was always a bottle of beer on the table in the little sitting room, where he always ended up on one pretext or another.

  If he had been asked what he was doing there, he would probably have replied that he had no idea, that he didn’t know what was going on, and that he had nearly had enough; and Madame Maigret, on the other end of the line – because she was still in Alsace – adopted an attitude not dissimilar to that of Mademoiselle Clément.

  It wasn’t something that happened often, but he had taken lots of notes. When he questioned people, he took his big black notebook out of his pocket, a notebook that closed with an elastic band, and wrote down what he was told.

  Then, in his room, when he was fed up with looking out of the window, he sat down at the table and copied out his notes. It was probably pointless, he knew. It was a kind of discipline, or perhaps a way of punishing himself for God knows what.

  As soon as a curtain stirred in one of the houses opposite, he went and stood at the window, which he had to keep closed, because the rain had brought a chill that made you want to light a fire.

  Eugène Lotard. – 32, born in Saint-Étienne. Son of a railwayman. Insurance agent at La Nationale. Married for three years to Rosalie, née Méchin, born in Benouville, near Étretat (Seine-Inférieure).

  Blanche Dubut. – 22, born in La Châtaigneraie (Vendée). Theatrical artiste. Unmarried.

  It was all desperately ordinary. These people had come to Paris, from every corner of France and even Europe, and ended up in Mademoiselle Clément’s house.