Maigret at the Coroner's Page 7

  He was sitting in one of the booths, with a bottle of beer in front of him. The waitress had come over and sat down beside him. They seemed like good friends. The chief deputy sheriff was talking to the girl, stroking her arm, and had offered her a drink.

  Did he know Maigret by sight? Had Harry Cole pointed him out among the spectators at the inquest?

  Maigret was pleased to see his American colleague in the bar. Hadn’t that always been his own habit? This was doubtless not O’Rourke’s first visit to the Penguin. He wasn’t playing the cop. He was slumped off in his corner. He was smoking cigarettes, not a pipe. And he did something rather surprising. At one point, he lit a cigarette and, quite casually, after taking a few puffs, he held it out to the girl, who put it between her lips.

  Had she been here the night of Bessie’s death? Probably. She must be here every evening. She had served them.

  O’Rourke was saying something funny, and she was laughing. She had served a couple who had just walked in, then returned to sit by him.

  He seemed to be flirting with her. He had red hair in a crew cut and a ruddy complexion.

  Why didn’t Maigret go and sit near them? All he had to do was introduce himself.

  ‘Un demi!’ he said.

  Startled, he caught himself right away: ‘A beer!’

  The beer was strong, like an English brew. Many patrons ignored their glasses to drink straight from the bottle. Next to Maigret was a cigarette machine like the vending machines for chocolates in the Paris Métro.

  What was out of kilter?

  In talking with him about armed forces recruitment, Harry Cole had said, ‘Among others, we get lots of folks on parole.’

  Maigret had not understood, so Cole had gone into detail.

  ‘Here, when a man is sentenced to two years, five years in prison or even more, it doesn’t mean that he spends his complete sentence in the penitentiary. If his conduct is satisfactory, after a certain time, maybe a few months, he is released on parole. He’s free, but must give an account of himself to a police officer, every day at first, then every week, finally every month.’

  ‘Do many of them fall back into crime?’

  ‘I don’t have any statistics to hand. The FBI complains that parole is given too easily. Some folks on parole commit theft or murder barely a few hours after their release. Others prefer to join the armed services, which automatically releases them from police surveillance.’

  ‘Was this the case with Ward?’

  ‘I don’t believe so. Mullins, I think, has been sentenced several times for minor offences. Especially for assault and battery. He’s from Michigan. Those guys are tough.’

  Another thing that baffled Maigret was that people were almost never from the place where they were. Here in Tucson, the coroner – who doubled as the justice of the peace – was from Maryland, but had gone to college in California. The engine driver who had testified earlier was from Tennessee. And the barman at the Penguin must have come straight from Brooklyn.

  Up in the big cities of the North, there were slums, impoverished areas with apartment buildings like barracks, where men were hardened by life and the street kids quickly formed neighbourhood gangs.

  In the South, the people outside the cities lived in wooden shacks surrounded by rubbish.

  But this was not an explanation, Maigret realized that. There was something else, and he drank his beer while staring stubbornly over at his colleague and the waitress.

  For an instant he wondered if O’Rourke were really there to keep an eye on him. It was not impossible. In spite of his air of taking life and other people lightly, Harry Cole might well have guessed that he would come to the Penguin that evening. Perhaps someone wasn’t pleased to see him nosing around the case?

  He was wrong to drink too much. But what else was there to do? He couldn’t sit outside for an hour with his glass, as on a terrace. Neither could he wander alone on foot down endless streets. He didn’t feel like going to a cinema or shutting himself up in his hotel room.

  He was doing what the others all did. When his glass was empty, he signalled to the barman, who refilled it, and he told himself that in the morning he would simply turn to that blue drugstore bottle to get back on his feet.

  He had written down the address where Bessie had lived with Erna Bolton. In the end he slid off his bar-stool and walked up and down the neighbourhood trying to decipher the names or, rather, the numbers of the streets.

  As soon as you left the commercial artery with its shining shop windows, the streets grew dark, with houses separated from one another by lawns.

  Did people leave their shutters and curtains open on purpose?

  All the houses had front porches and on almost all of them you saw families relaxing in their rocking chairs.

  Where the lights were on, rooms often revealed a more intimate life: couples eating, women combing their hair, men reading their newspapers, and from every shanty-house floated the murmuring of radios.

  Bessie and Erna Bolton’s house was at a street corner. A single-storey affair. The light was on. The place was rather attractive, almost luxurious. Harold Mitchell and the musician were sitting on a sofa smoking cigarettes, while Erna, in a peignoir, was serving them ice cream.

  Maggie Wallach was not there. Maybe she was working at the drive-in eatery, taking hot dogs and spaghetti out to the customers in their cars …

  No mystery lurked anywhere. Everyone seemed to live in bright light. There were no worrisome shadows creeping around the houses, no curtains closed over snug interiors. Nothing but those cars going God knows where, without ever using their horns, stopping short at the crossroads as soon as the light turned red, later continuing on straight ahead.

  He did not have dinner that night. When he went back downtown, the drugstores where he had counted on eating a sandwich were closed. Everything was closed, except for the three cinemas and the bars.

  So, a little shamefaced, he went inside one of those bars, then another. He greeted the barman familiarly, as he’d seen others do, and perched on a stool.

  Everywhere the same subdued music was playing. All along the counter, shiny table-top jukeboxes swallowed up nickels. Turning a dial made the desired selection.

  Could that be the explanation?

  He was on his own and did what a man on his own can do.

  When he returned to the hotel, he felt bitter and sluggish. He headed for the lift, then turned back to replace Cole’s car key in the cubbyhole. His colleague might need his vehicle early the next morning.

  ‘Good night, sir!’

  ‘Good night!’

  There was a Bible on the night table. In hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms, an identical Bible with a black cover sat waiting for the traveller.

  In short: the bar or the Bible!

  • • •

  Class was being held upstairs again, and before Ezekiel’s summons people were strolling out in the colonnade, already hot in the morning sun.

  Everyone was wearing a clean shirt, and a refreshing shower had dispelled the drowsiness of the night.

  And so, every morning, they began life anew, with a smile.

  It was a little surprising, upon entering the courtroom, to see the five servicemen now out of uniform and wearing ample outfits of coarse blue cloth resembling pyjamas, which left their necks completely bare.

  The result was that they didn’t look so nice and clean-cut any more. Their irregular features were more noticeable, the slight asymmetries inspiring a feeling of uneasiness.

  The blackb
oard had been set up and still showed the little puppet between the two chalk lines representing the railway tracks. This blackboard would again figure in the proceedings.

  ‘Elias Hansen, of the Southern Pacific Railroad.’

  He was not one of the train men Mitchell had asked to have testify. In a strong, even voice, this witness calmly explained what his job was. On behalf of the company, he investigated any thefts on the trains, accidents or violent deaths.

  He was certainly of Scandinavian background. It was obvious from his demeanour. He was used to coroner’s inquests and turned without any prompting towards the jury with the air of a schoolteacher explaining a difficult problem.

  ‘I live in Nogales. I received a phone call shortly before six a.m. about the incident. I arrived at the site by car at six twenty-eight.’

  ‘Did you see other cars near the scene of the accident?’

  ‘The ambulance was still there, as well as four or five cars, some belonging to the police, the others to onlookers. A deputy sheriff was keeping people away from the railway tracks.’

  ‘Was the train still there?’

  ‘No. I met Deputy Sheriff Atwater, who had arrived earlier.’

  He pointed to someone among the spectators, a man Maigret had already noticed without taking him for a colleague.

  ‘What did you do?’

  The man rose and stepped confidently to the blackboard, where he picked up a piece of chalk.

  ‘May I erase this?’

  Then he sketched in the highway and railway tracks, indicating the four cardinal points and the directions of Nogales and Tucson.

  ‘First of all, at this spot here, Atwater pointed out some tyre tracks showing that a car had braked rather violently before parking by the roadside. As you know, the shoulder is sandy. Clearly visible footprints led away from the car, and we followed them.’

  ‘The footsteps of how many people?’

  ‘A man and a woman.’

  ‘Can you indicate on the blackboard the approximate path they took?’

  He did this in dotted lines.

  ‘The man and woman appeared to walk side by side, without going in a straight line. They made several detours before reaching the tracks and stopped at least twice. Then they crossed the railway tracks at the spot I’ve marked with an X. On the other side, at a certain point, the trail disappears because the ground is hard and littered with pebbles. We picked it up again near the place where the woman was struck by the train. On the railbed, properly speaking, made of gravel, there were no footprints, but we found the woman’s again a few yards away.’

  ‘Not those of the man?’

  ‘The man’s as well, but they were not completely parallel. Someone had urinated at that spot, it was quite visible in the sand.’

  ‘Did you note if the footprints were ever superimposed at times?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Here, and again here, twice, one of the man’s prints covers one of the woman’s, as if he had happened to swerve in behind her.’

  ‘Did you find traces of the man going back towards the highway?’

  ‘Not in a precise and continuous way. From this point on, the tracks become numerous and confusing, doubtless because of the train men, then the ambulance attendants and the police.’

  ‘Do you have the string the engineer mentioned?’

  He pulled it nonchalantly from his pocket. It was an ordinary piece of string that he obviously considered unimportant.

  ‘Here it is. I found another piece fifty yards farther along.’

  ‘Any questions, counsellor?’

  ‘How many people were at the site when you arrived?’

  ‘Perhaps a dozen.’

  ‘Had other people already begun the investigation?’

  ‘Deputy Sheriff Atwater and also, I believe, Mr O’Rourke.’

  ‘You didn’t find anything?’

  ‘I came across a white leather handbag four or five yards from the tracks.’

  ‘On the side with the footprints?’

  ‘On the opposite side. It was partly embedded in the soft soil, as if it had been violently thrown at the moment of impact. We’ve seen that before. It’s the result of centrifugal force.’

  ‘Did you open the handbag?’

  ‘I passed it on to Sheriff O’Rourke.’

  ‘Was that the end of your investigation?’

  ‘No, sir. I examined the highway for about half a mile in the directions of both Tucson and Nogales. Around one hundred and fifty yards along towards Nogales, I found distinct tyre tracks indicating that a car had pulled over on the right shoulder. There were many footprints, and the tyre tracks on the highway showed that the car had turned around there.’

  ‘Are these tracks identical to the ones of the first car you spoke of?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  Hansen pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and read down a list of identifying marks from the tyres on the car that had made a U-turn. The four tyres were worn and were in fact of varying makes.

  ‘Do you know to which car they belong?’

  ‘I looked into that afterwards. They’re the tyres on Ward’s Chevrolet.’

  ‘And the ones on the car where the footprints of the man and woman begin?’

  ‘I don’t think the sheriff will have any trouble finding that car. Tyres of that make are sold only on credit, with monthly payments.’

  ‘Have you examined the taxi that drove to that spot with Sergeant O’Neil and Corporals Van Fleet and Wo Lee?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That is not the other car. The taxi is equipped with Goodrich tyres.’

  ‘Any questions, members of the jury?’

  Recess. Maigret was already lighting his pipe, and Ezekiel, lighting his own, gave him a conspiratorial wink. After the deputy with the big revolver and the cartridge-studded belt led the five men in prison garb away to the arcade, they went one by one to the men’s lavatory, where Maigret happened to find Ward and Mitchell.

  Was he mistaken? He had the impression that when he’d pushed open the door, Sergeant Ward and Bessie’s brother had suddenly stopped talking.

  5. The Driver’s Deposition

  During that same recess, Maigret found himself alone with Mitchell in a corner of the ground-floor arcade, not far from the big, boxy red Coca-Cola machine.

  Maigret felt as gauche and uncomfortable as a country boy accosting a pretty woman in a Paris street. At first he kept looking aside, clearing his throat. He tried to appear as casual as possible.

  ‘Would you happen to have a photograph of your sister with you?’

  What happened in the next few seconds was something Maigret had seen countless times before. Mitchell, who did not look particularly amiable to begin with, instantly took on the look of all thugs, from the tough guys of Paris to the gangsters of the American cinema. It was an animal reflex, a defence such people have kept, and it surfaces when wild beasts suddenly freeze, on the alert, tense, their fur bristling.

  He stared hard at the big Frenchman, who did his best to remain relaxed.

  A touch cravenly, hoping to appease the man, Maigret added: ‘There are lots of questions that they don’t seem eager to ask you.’

  Mitchell was still wary, trying to see where he stood.

  ‘It’s as if they want it to be an accident.’

  ‘That is what they want.’

  ‘I’m in the same line of work. I’m in the French police. This case interests me for personal reasons. I’d have liked to see a photo of
your sister.’

  Tough guys are the same everywhere. Except that here they were less scornful, more embittered.

  ‘Oh, so you don’t believe, like those sons-of-bitches, that she went on purpose to lie down on the tracks and get run over by the train?’

  He radiated fury and resentment. In the end he set down his bottle of Coca-Cola and pulled a big, worn wallet from his pocket.

  ‘Look, here she is three years ago.’

  It was a poor photo, taken at a country fair, in front of a painted backdrop. The three people looked pallid. They certainly weren’t in the Southwest, because they were wearing thick winter clothing, and Bessie had a cheap fur collar on her coat, with a funny little round cap on her head.

  She appeared to be fifteen, but Maigret knew she was younger. Her drawn, sickly little face was not without charm. She looked as if she were playing at being a woman, one proud to be going out with two men.

  They must have been off on a spree that evening. The world was their oyster. Mitchell, barely an adolescent, hat down over his eyes, cigarette dangling from his lip, wore a look of defiance.

  Her second companion was a bit older, eighteen or nineteen, rather big, rather fleshy.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Steve. He married her a few weeks later.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘At that time, he worked in a garage.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘In Kansas.’

  ‘Why did he get divorced?’

  ‘To begin with he took off without warning, no one knew why. Those first few months, he sent her a little money; the money orders came from St Louis, and then from Los Angeles. Finally, one day he wrote her that it would be better if they divorced and he sent her the necessary papers.’

  ‘Did he give a reason?’

  ‘I think he didn’t want to get my sister mixed up in anything. Six months later he was nabbed in a stolen-car ring. He’s in San Quentin now.’

  ‘Have you been to prison, too?’

  ‘Just reform school.’