Maigret's Dead Man Page 7

  ‘About half an hour.’

  ‘And it drove off towards the centre of town?’

  ‘No. It headed along the river bank towards Charenton.’

  ‘Was any kind of parcel transferred from the building to the car? Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘No, nothing. She reckons that the men weren’t carrying anything. And that’s what puzzles me. There’s also the time factor. I’m wondering what the men could have done with the body between nine that night and one in the morning. They can’t have just gone driving around the countryside. Shall I bring the old woman round now?’

  ‘Yes. Get a taxi and hang on to it. Bring an inspector with you. He can wait downstairs with the old woman.’

  ‘You’re going to leave your house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what about your bronchitis?’

  It was kind of Lucas: he said ‘bronchitis’ instead of ‘cold’, which made it sound more serious.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that.’

  Madame Maigret began stirring on her chair and almost said something.

  ‘Tell the inspector not to let her run off while you’re coming up the stairs. Some people get sudden urges to change their minds.’

  ‘I don’t think she’s one of them. She’s keen to see her photo in the papers along with all her titles and qualifications. She wanted to know where the photographers were.’

  ‘Well, have her photographed before you leave. She’ll like having her picture taken.’

  He hung up, gave Madame Maigret a look full of gentle irony then lowered his eyes to his Alexandre Dumas, which he hadn’t finished and probably wouldn’t finish this time round. It would have to wait until he was ill on some other occasion. He also spared a glance, but one of disdain, for the cup of herbal tea.

  ‘To work!’ he exclaimed as he stood up and made straight for the cupboard, from which he produced the decanter of calvados and a liqueur glass with a gilt rim.

  ‘It was worth filling you full of aspirin so that you would sweat it out!’

  4.

  In the annals of the Police Judiciaire are a number of ‘stake-outs’ which are invariably trotted out for the benefit of new recruits. Among them is one of Maigret’s, now fifteen years old. It was late autumn, at the very worst time of year, especially in Normandy, where the low, leaden sky makes the days even shorter. For three days and two nights, Maigret had remained outside the garden gate on a deserted road on the outskirts of Fécamp, waiting for a man to emerge from the house opposite. There were no other houses in sight, only fields. Even the cows were under cover. To ask to be relieved, he would have had to walk two kilometres to find a phone. No one knew he was there. He had not told anyone where he would be. For three days and two nights it had poured unrelentingly, and the icy rain had swamped the tobacco in his pipe. Perhaps all told, three farm labourers in clogs had walked past. They had stared at him suspiciously and hurried on their way. Maigret had had nothing to eat with him, nothing to drink and, worst of all, by the end of day two, he ran out of matches for his pipe.

  Lucas had another under his belt, as part of what was called The Case of the Halfwit Invalid. To keep watch on a small hotel – to be specific, it was on the corner of Rue de Birague, just off Places des Vosges – he had been installed in a room on the other side of the street, disguised as a paralysed old relic. Every morning a nurse sat him down by the window, where he stayed all day. He wore a fan-shaped false beard. He was fed with a spoon. That had lasted for ten days, and afterwards he could hardly use his legs.

  Maigret now recalled these and a few other such tales and sensed that the stake-out he was beginning would become no less famous. At any rate, one to be savoured – especially by him.

  It was almost a game, but he was playing it with total seriousness. At about seven o’clock, for example, just as Lucas was about to leave, he had asked him quite casually:

  ‘Care for a little glass of something?’

  The shutters of the bar were closed, as they had been when he had got there. The lights were on. The atmosphere inside was like that of any small bar after hours, with the tables set out and sawdust scattered on the floor.

  Maigret went to get the drinks from the shelves behind the counter.

  ‘Picon-grenadine? Export-cassis?’

  ‘An export.’

  And as if he were trying to identify with the dead bar-owner, Maigret had served himself a Suze.

  ‘Who do you reckon could to do the job?’

  ‘There’s Chevrier. His parents used to run a hotel at Moret-sur-Loing, and he helped them until he was called up for his military service.’

  ‘Have a word with him this evening so he can make arrangements. Cheers! He’ll have to find a woman who can cook.’

  ‘He’ll manage.’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘No thanks. I’d better be off.’

  ‘Send Moers to me here at once. Tell him to bring his bag of tricks.’

  Maigret walked him to the door, glanced out briefly at the now deserted riverbank, the barrels lined up in rows and the barges moored for the night.

  It was a small bar no different from many others you find not in Paris itself but in the suburbs, the typical small café which features in postcards or cheap prints. The house stood on a corner. It had one storey, a red-tile roof and yellow walls on which was traced in large brown letters: ‘Au Petit Albert’. And on each side, with amateurish flourishes: ‘Wines – All Day Snacks’.

  In the yard at the back, under an awning, Maigret had found half barrels painted green and containing shrubs which in summer would be put outside on the pavement with two or three tables to make a terrace.

  He had now made himself at home in the empty building. Since no fires had been lit for several days, the air was cold and damp. Several times he had cast dubious glances at the large stove in the middle of the bar, which had a chimney pipe that rose black and gleaming into the air before disappearing through a wall.

  Why not after all, since there was an almost full bucket of coal?

  Under the same awning at the back he found kindling next to a small axe and a chopping block. There were some old newspapers in one corner of the kitchen.

  A few minutes later the fire was roaring in the stove, and the inspector was standing in front of it with his feet firmly planted and his hands behind his back, in that characteristic pose.

  Basically, Lucas’ old woman was not as crazy as all that. They had gone to her house. In the taxi on the way, she had talked volubly all the time, but now and then she glanced at them slyly to gauge the effect she was producing.

  Her house was less than a hundred metres away. It was small, just two storeys, what they call a detached house with a small garden. Maigret had wondered how, given the unalterable fact that her house was on the same side of the street, she had been able to see what was going on some considerable distance along her pavement, especially after night had fallen.

  ‘You didn’t stay out on the pavement all that time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor on your doorstep?’

  ‘I was in my house.’

  She was right. The front room, which was amazingly neat and clean, had not only windows that gave on to the street but a side window which faced towards the Petit Albert and thus offered a view of a large part of the street. Since there were no shutters, it was only natural that the headlights of a parked car should have attracted the attention of the old lady.

  ‘Were you alone here at the time?’

  ‘Madame
Chauffier was with me.’

  A midwife who lived in a street a little further along. She had been checked out. It was true. Contrary to what might have been expected by anyone who had seen the old woman, the inside of the house had the same domestic look as the houses of all spinsters. There was none of the clutter with which fortune-tellers normally surround themselves. On the contrary, the plain deal furniture came straight from Boulevard Barbès, and there was light-brown linoleum on the floor,

  ‘It was bound to happen,’ she said. ‘Have you seen what’s written above the front of his café? Either he’s one of them or else it’s sacrilege.’

  She had put water for the coffee on to boil. She was absolutely determined to make Maigret drink a cup. She explained to him that the Petit Albert was a book of magic dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

  ‘But what if his name happens to be Albert? And if he is really little?’ replied Maigret.

  ‘As a matter of fact he is short, I know. I’ve seen him many times. But that’s not a proper reason. There are matters with which it is unwise to meddle.’

  About Albert’s wife, she said:

  ‘Tall woman, dark hair, not very clean. I wouldn’t like to eat anything she cooked. It always reeks of garlic.’

  ‘How long have the shutters been closed?’

  ‘I don’t know. The day after the day I saw the car I stayed in bed. I had flu. When I was up and about again, the café was shut. I thought: and good riddance too.’

  ‘Was it a noisy place?’

  ‘No. Hardly anyone ever went there. But those men working the crane you can see on the wharf used to go there for their lunch. There was also the cellarman from Cess the wine merchants. And men from the boats would go there and have a drink at the counter.’

  She had asked particularly about which newspapers her photo would be in.

  ‘But I must insist that they don’t say in print that I tell fortunes. It would be a bit like them saying that you’re just a policeman on the beat.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take offence.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be good for me, professionally.’

  Time to get moving! He was done with the old woman. He had drunk his coffee and then Lucas and he had walked to the café on the corner. It was Lucas who had automatically tried the lever handle of the door. It was open.

  That was odd. A small bar whose door had been left unlocked for four days and had survived unscathed, with bottles on the shelves behind the bar and cash in the till.

  The bottom of the walls was painted in shiny brown gloss up to a metre from floor level, then pale-green above it. There were the same advertising calendars as are found in every country café.

  Basically, the Petit Albert was not really as Parisian as all that, or rather, like most Parisians, it had stuck to its country roots. Just by looking at it, it was obvious it had been done out like this deliberately, with almost loving care, and its like would have been found in any village in France.

  The same was true of the bedroom upstairs: Maigret, with his hands in his pockets, had inspected the premises from top to bottom. Lucas had followed him with some amusement because, with his overcoat and hat removed, Maigret seemed to be actually taking possession of a new house. In less than half an hour, he had made himself more or less at home and from time to time went and stood behind the bar.

  ‘Well, one thing’s for sure: Nine isn’t here.’

  He had looked everywhere for some trace of her from cellar to attic and also searched the yard and the small garden, which was cluttered with old chests and empty bottles.

  ‘What do you think, Lucas?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  In the bar there were just eight tables, four arranged along one wall, with two facing them and the last two in the middle of the room, by the stove. It was to one of the latter that the two men kept being drawn from time to time, because the sawdust under the legs of one of the chairs had been carefully swept up.

  Why, if not to remove bloodstains?

  But who had cleared away the victim’s plates and cutlery? Who had washed them and the wine glasses?

  ‘Maybe they came back later?’ suggested Lucas.

  But there was one very curious thing. Whereas everything in the whole place was neat and tidy, a bottle, just the one, had been opened and left on the counter. Maigret had been careful not to touch it. It was a bottle of cognac, and it could only be supposed that whoever had helped himself – or themselves – had not bothered with glasses but had drunk straight from the bottle.

  The unknown visitors had been upstairs. They had rummaged through all the drawers but had stuffed underwear and other contents back inside them before shutting them again.

  The oddest thing of all was that two frames hanging on the bedroom wall, which had probably contained photographs, were now empty.

  It was not Albert’s appearance that they had wanted to suppress: there was another picture of him standing on the chest of drawers: cheerful, round face, kiss-curl over his forehead, the look of a comedian about him, just as the owner of the Caves du Beaujolais had said.

  A taxi pulled up outside. The sound of footsteps on the pavement. Maigret walked to the door and drew back the bolt.

  ‘Come in,’ he said to Moers, who was carrying a rather heavy case. ‘Have you eaten? No? Would you like an aperitif?’

  It turned out to be one of the most curious evenings and strangest nights of his life. From time to time he would go and watch Moers, who had set to work on a lengthy task, looking everywhere, first in the bar itself, then the kitchen, the bedroom, in all the rooms in the building, for the faintest trace of fingerprints.

  ‘Whoever picked up this bottle first,’ he said, ‘was wearing rubber gloves.’

  He had also taken samples of sawdust from near the all-important table. Meanwhile, Maigret had searched a dustbin and found remnants of cod.

  Only a few hours earlier his dead man had no name and in Maigret’s mind he had been just a blurred figure. Now not only did they have a photo of him, but he was living in his house, using his tables and chairs, fingering the clothes which had belonged to him and handling objects which had been his. Almost the moment they had arrived it was with a certain satisfaction that he had pointed out to Lucas a coat on a clothes hanger upstairs: it was a jacket made of the same material as the dead man’s trousers.

  In other words, he had been right. Albert had come home and changed his clothes, as was his habit.

  ‘Do you think, Moers, old son, that it’s very long since anyone was here?’

  ‘I’d say someone was here today,’ replied the young man, after examining the traces of alcohol on the counter next to the open bottle.

  It was quite possible. The place had been left wide open to all and sundry. But pedestrians passing by didn’t know. When people see closed shutters, it rarely occurs to them to try the handle of the door to see if it is locked.

  ‘So they were looking for something, right?’

  ‘That’s my view too.’

  Something not too big, most likely some sort of paper, because they had even opened a very small cardboard box which had contained a pair of earrings.

  Odd was the word for the dinner which Maigret and Moers had eaten together in the bar of the café. Maigret had taken charge of serving it up. In the pantry he had found sausage, tins of sardines and some Dutch cheese. He had gone down to the cellar and tapped a barrel, which gave a muddy, bluish wine. There were also full bottles of wine, but he had not touched them.

  ‘Are you going to stay here,
chief?’

  ‘Certainly. I don’t suppose anyone will show up tonight, but I don’t feel like going home.’

  ‘Do you want me to keep you company?’

  ‘Thanks, old son, but no. I’d much rather you went straight off and started on your analyses.’

  Moers missed nothing, not even the woman’s hair caught in a large-toothed comb on the dressing table upstairs. Very few sounds drifted in from outside. Passers-by were rare. From time to time, especially after midnight, there was the roar of a lorry coming in from the outskirts on its way to Les Halles.

  Maigret had phoned his wife.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not going to catch another cold?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve lit the stove. In a while I’ll make myself a grog.’

  ‘Won’t you get any sleep tonight?’

  ‘Of course I will. I have a choice between a bed and a couch.’

  ‘Are the sheets clean?’

  ‘There are clean ones in a cupboard on the landing.’

  In fact, it meant remaking the bed with cold sheets and sleeping in them. He thought about it and opted for the couch.

  Moers left around one in the morning. Maigret refilled the stove to the top, made himself a stiff grog, checked that everything was in order and, after bolting the door, climbed up the spiral staircase on leaden legs like a man on his way to bed.

  There was a dressing gown in the wardrobe, blue, made of soft flannel with artificial silk lapels. But it was far too small and not broad enough for him. The slippers at the foot of the bed weren’t his size either.

  He kept his socks on, wrapped himself in a blanket and settled on the couch with a pillow under his head. The upstairs windows did not have shutters. The light from a gas streetlamp came through the elaborately patterned curtains and cast baroque shapes on the walls.

  He looked at them through half-closed eyes as he puffed gently on one last pipe. He was acclimatizing himself. He was trying the house for size, just as he might have tried a new coat. The smell of the place was already becoming familiar. It was sweet and tart at the same time and it reminded him of the country.