Friend of Madame Maigret Page 8

  She reeked so strongly of scent, the odors in the house were so clinging that he was glad to be back on the pavement and to breathe the smell of the rain-washed streets.

  It was not yet seven o’clock. Little Lapointe must have gone to meet his sister and tell her what had happened at the Quai in the course of the day, just as Maigret had advised him to.

  He was a good boy, too easily upset as yet, too emotional, but they could probably make something of him. Lucas, in his office, was still acting as conductor of an orchestra, keeping in touch by telephone with all departments, all sections of Paris, and anywhere else that the trio was being searched for.

  As for Janvier, he was still sticking to Alfonsi, who had gone back to the rue de Turenne and spent nearly an hour in the basement with Fernande.

  The chief inspector drank another glass of beer while he read the notes written by Moers, which reminded him of something.

  Alfred Moss, Belgian Nationality (?) About 42. Music-hall artiste for about ten years. Member of an acrobatic team with parallel bars: Moss, Jeff, and Joe.

  Maigret was remembering. He was remembering particularly the one man of the three who played the clown in baggy black clothes and interminable shoes, with a blue chin, a huge mouth, and a green wig.

  The man seemed completely disjointed, and after each leap he would pretend to fall so heavily that it seemed impossible he hadn’t broken something.

  Has worked in most countries of Europe and even in the United States, where he was with Barnum’s circus for four years. Retired after an accident.

  Then followed the names by which he had been known to the police since then: Mosselaer, Van Vlanderen, Paterson, Smith, Thomas. . . . He had been arrested successively in London, Manchester, Brussels, Amsterdam, and three or four times in Paris.

  However, he had never been convicted, due to lack of proof. Whichever identity he was using, his papers were invariably in order, and he spoke four or five languages perfectly enough to change his nationality as he pleased.

  The first time he had been prosecuted was in London, where he was claiming to be a Swiss citizen and working as an interpreter in a large hotel. A jewel case had disappeared from a suite that he had been seen leaving, but the owner of the jewels, an old American lady, testified that she herself had summoned him to the suite to translate a letter she had received from Germany.

  In Amsterdam, four years later, he had been suspected of confidence tricking. No proof could be established, any more than it could the first time, and he disappeared from circulation for a while.

  The General Investigations Department in Paris was the next to take an interest in him, again unsuccessfully, during a period when the cross-frontier traffic in gold was being carried onto a big scale, and when Moss, now Joseph Thomas, was shuttling between France and Belgium.

  He had his ups and downs, living now in a first-class, sometimes even a luxury, hotel, now in a shabby furnished room.

  For three years there had been no record of him anywhere. It was not known in what country or under what name he was operating, assuming that he still was operating.

  Maigret walked toward the telephone booth and got Lucas on the phone.

  “Go up and see Moers and ask him for all the dope on a man named Moss. Yes. Tell him he’s one of our boys. He’ll give you his description and all the rest of it. Put out a general alert. But he’s not to be arrested. If he’s found, they must try not to arouse his suspicion. Get it?”

  “I get it, Chief. Someone’s just spotted the child again.”

  “Where?”

  “Avenue Denfert-Rochereau. I’ve sent someone over. I’m waiting. I haven’t got enough men available any more. There’s also been a call from the Gare du Nord. Torrence has gone there.”

  He felt like walking a bit, in the rain, and went through the place d’Anvers, where he looked at the bench, now dripping with rain, where Madame Maigret had waited. Opposite, on the building at the corner of the avenue Trudaine, there was a sign on which was written in big, faded letters the word: Dentist.

  He would come back. There were so many things he wanted to do, which the bustle of events always forced him to postpone to the next day.

  He jumped on a bus. When he arrived at his own door, he was astonished not to hear any sound from the kitchen, not to smell anything. He entered, went through the dining room, where the table wasn’t set, and finally saw Madame Maigret, in her petticoat, engaged in taking off her stockings.

  This was so unlike her that he didn’t know what to say, and she burst out laughing when she saw his big round eyes.

  “Are you cross, Maigret?”

  Her voice held a tone of almost aggressive good humor that was quite new to him, and on her bed he could see her best dress, her smart hat.

  “You’ll have to be content with a cold dinner. Just imagine, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to prepare anything. Besides, you so seldom come home to meals, nowadays!”

  And, sitting in her easy chair, she was rubbing her feet with a sigh of relief.

  “I think I never walked so far in my life!”

  He stood there, in his overcoat, his wet hat on his head, looking at her and waiting, and she was deliberately keeping him on tenterhooks.

  “I began with the big shops although I was almost sure that was no use. But you never know; and I didn’t want to regret my carelessness later. Then I did the whole of the rue La Fayette, I went up the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and I walked along the rue Blanche, the rue de Clichy. I came back down toward the Opéra, all this on foot, even after it had begun to rain. I suppose I may as well admit that yesterday, without telling you, I’d already ’one’ the Ternes area and the Champs-Élysées.

  “That was to make absolutely sure, too, because I suspected that it was too expensive around there.”

  At last he brought out the sentence she was waiting for, which she had been trying to elicit for quite a while.

  “What were you looking for?”

  “The hat, of course! Didn’t you catch on? It was on my mind, that business. I thought it wasn’t a man’s job. A coat and skirt is a coat and skirt, especially a blue one. But a hat, that’s different, and I’d had a good look at this one. They’ve been wearing white hats for several weeks now. Only one hat is never exactly like another. Do you see? You don’t mind if the meal’s cold? I brought some cooked meat from the Italian place, Parma ham, pickled mushrooms, and a whole lot of ready-made hors d’oeuvre.”

  “What about the hat?”

  “Are you interested in it, Maigret? By the way, your own is dripping on the carpet. You’d better take it off.”

  She had been successful, otherwise she wouldn’t be in such a teasing mood and would never take the liberty of playing with him like this. He would just have to let her take her time and maintain his grumpy expression, because she was enjoying it.

  While she was putting on a woollen dress, he sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I knew it wasn’t a hat from a really first-class milliner and that there was no sense in looking in the rue de la Paix, the rue Saint-Honoré or the avenue Matignon. Anyhow, those places don’t put anything in the window, and I’d have had to go in and pretend to be a customer. Can you see me trying on hats at Caroline Reboux’ or Rose Valois’?

  “But it wasn’t a hat from the Galeries or the Printemps either.

  “Somewhere between the two. A hat from a milliner’s definitely, and a milliner with good taste.

  “That’s why I did all the little shops, especially around the place d’Anvers, or not too far away at all events.

  “I saw at least a hundred white hats, and yet it was a pearl gray one that finally stopped me, in the rue Caumartin, at Hélène et Rosine.

  “It was exactly the same hat in another shade, and I’m sure I’m not mistaken. I told you that the one belonging to the lady with the little boy had a tiny veil, three or four fingers wide, that came down just over the eyes.

  “The gray hat h
ad the same veil.”

  “Did you go in?”

  Maigret had to make an effort not to smile, for it was the first time that the shy Madame Maigret had taken part in an investigation, no doubt also the first time she had entered a milliner’s in the neighborhood of the Opéra.

  “Are you surprised? Do you think I look too much of a stay-at-home? Yes, I did go in. I was afraid it might be closed. I asked perfectly naturally if they hadn’t got the same hat in white.

  “The lady said not, but they had it in pale blue, yellow, and jade green. She added that she had had it in white, but that she had sold it more than a month ago.”

  “What did you do?” he asked, intrigued.

  “I heaved a deep sigh and said to her:

  “‘That must have been the one I saw a friend of mine wearing.’

  “I could see myself in the glass, because there are mirrors all round the shop, and my face was scarlet.

  “‘Do you know Countess Panetti?’ she asked, in a tone of surprise that wasn’t very flattering.

  “‘I’ve met her. I’d very much like to see her again, because I have some information for her that she asked me to get and I’ve mislaid her address.’

  “‘I suppose she’s still at . . .’

  “She was on the point of stopping. She wasn’t completely sure of me. But she couldn’t very well not finish her sentence.

  “‘I suppose she’s still at Claridge’s.’”

  Madame Maigret was looking at him triumphantly and teasingly at the same time, with an anxious trembling of her lips in spite of everything. He kept up the game to the end, muttered:

  “I hope you didn’t go interrogating the hall porter at Claridge’s.”

  “I came straight back. Are you cross?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve caused you enough trouble with this business so the least I can do is try to help you. Now come and eat, since I hope you’re going to take time for a bite before you go over there.”

  This dinner reminded him of their first meals together, when she was discovering Paris and was delighted by all the little ready-to-eat dishes sold in the Italian shops. It was more like a picnic than a dinner.

  “Do you think the information’s reliable?”

  “So long as you didn’t get the wrong hat.”

  “I’m absolutely sure about that. As far as the shoes go, I’m not so confident.”

  “What’s this about shoes now?”

  “When you’re sitting on a bench, in a square, your eyes naturally fall on the shoes of the person next to you. Once when I looked at them closely I could see that she was embarrassed and was trying to stick her feet under the bench.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain, Maigret. Don’t make that face! It’s not your fault if you don’t know anything about feminine matters. Suppose someone accustomed to first-class couturiers wants to look like a little housewife and be inconspicuous? She buys a ready-made suit, which is easy. She may also buy a hat that isn’t in the luxury class, although I’m not quite so sure about the hat.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She may already have had it, but thought it looked enough like the other white hats being worn this season by shopgirls. She takes off her jewelery, of course! But there’s one thing she would have a lot of trouble getting used to: ready-made shoes. Having your shoes made to measure by the best shoemakers makes your feet delicate. You’ve heard me groaning often enough to know that women have sensitive feet by nature. So the lady keeps her own shoes, thinking no one will notice them. That’s where she’s wrong, because as far as I’m concerned, that’s the first thing I look at. Usually it happens the other way round: you see pretty, well-dressed women, with expensive frocks or fur coats, wearing cheap shoes.”

  “Did she have expensive shoes?”

  “Made to measure, I’m sure. I don’t know enough about it to say what shoemaker they came from. No doubt some women could have told.”

  He took time after dinner to pour himself a little glass of prunelle and to smoke almost a whole pipe.

  “Are you going to Claridge’s? You won’t be too late?”

  He took a cab, got out opposite the luxury hotel on the Champs-Élysées, and walked over to the hall porter’s office. It was the night porter by this time, whom he had known for years, and this was a good thing because night porters invariably know more about the guests than those on the day shift.

  His arrival in a place of this type always produced the same effect. He could see the clerks at the reception desk, the assistant manager, and even the lift boy raising their eyebrows and wondering what was up. Scandals are unpopular in a luxury hotel, and the presence of a chief inspector from Police Headquarters rarely bodes any good.

  “How are you, Benoît?”

  “Not too bad, Monsieur Maigret. The Americans are beginning to show up.”

  “Is Countess Panetti still here?”

  “It’s at least a month since she left. Would you like me to check the exact date?”

  “Did her family go with her?”

  “What family?”

  It was the slack time. Most of the guests were out, at the theater or at dinner. In the golden light the pages stood about, with their arms dangling, near the marble columns and observed the chief inspector, whom they all knew by sight, from a distance.

  “I never knew she had any family. She’s been stopping here for years now . . . and . . .”

  “Tell me, have you ever seen the countess in a white hat?”

  “Certainly. She received one a few days before her departure.”

  “Did she also wear a blue suit?”

  “No. You must have got them mixed up, Monsieur Maigret. The blue suit is her maid, or her companion if you prefer it, in any case the young lady who travels with her.”

  “You’ve never seen Countess Panetti in a blue suit?”

  “If you knew her you wouldn’t ask me that.”

  Just on the off chance, Maigret handed him the photographs of the women picked out by Moers.

  “Anyone there who looks like her?”

  Benoît looked at the chief inspector, flabbergasted.

  “Are you sure you’re not mistaken? You’re showing me photographs of women under thirty, and the countess isn’t much less than seventy. Look, you’d better find out what your colleagues in the Society Section have got on her, because they must know her.

  “We get all kinds, don’t we? Well, the countess is one of our most unusual guests.”

  “In the first place, do you know who she is?”

  “She’s the widow of Count Panetti, the munitions and heavy industry man in Italy.

  “She lives all over the place, Paris, Cannes, Egypt. I think she spends some time every year in Vichy, too.”

  “Does she drink?”

  “Shall we say she uses champagne instead of water? I wouldn’t be surprised if she brushed her teeth with Pommery Brut! She dresses like a young girl, makes up like a doll, and spends most of every night in nightclubs.”

  “Her maid?”

  “I don’t know much about her. She’s always getting new ones. I hadn’t seen this one until this year. Last year she had a big girl with red hair, a professional masseuse, because she used to take a massage every day.”

  “Do you know the girl’s name?”

  “Gloria something. I haven’t got her slip anymore, but they’ll tell you in the office. I don’t know if she’s Italian or just from the South, maybe even from Toulouse?”

  “Small and dark?”

  “Yes, a smart, decent, pretty girl. I didn’t see much of her. She lived in the suite, not in a servant’s room, and she had her meals with her employer.”

  “No man?”

  “Only the son-in-law, who came to see them from time to time.”

  “When?”

  “Not long before they left. Ask at the desk for the dates. He didn’t live in the hotel.”

  “Do you know his name?”


  “Krynker, I think. He’s a Czech or a Hungarian.”

  “Dark, rather heavy, around forty?”

  “No. On the contrary, very fair and much younger. I doubt that he’s more than thirty.”

  They were interrupted by a group of American women in evening dress depositing their keys and asking for a taxi.

  “As for swearing that he was really a son-in-law . . .”

  “Did she have affairs?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t say yes or no.”

  “Did the son-in-law ever spend the night here?”

  “No. But they went out together several times.”

  “With the companion?”

  “She never went out at night with the countess. I’ve never even seen her in evening dress.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “To London, if I remember right. But just a minute. Something’s coming back to me. Ernest! Come here. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Didn’t Countess Panetti leave her heavy luggage behind?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The porter explained:

  “It often happens that our guests who are going away for a fairly long time leave some of their luggage here. We have a special baggage room for it. The countess left her trunks there.”

  “She didn’t say when she would be back?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Did she leave alone?”

  “With her maid.”

  “In a taxi?”

  “You’d have to ask my opposite number on the day shift about that. You’ll find him here tomorrow morning from eight o’clock on.”

  Maigret took out of his pocket the photograph of Moss. The hall porter merely glanced at it, pulled a face.

  “You won’t find him here.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Paterson. I did know him, under the name of Mosselaer, when I was working in Milan at least fifteen years ago. He’s barred from all the luxury hotels and he wouldn’t dare show his face in them. He knows they wouldn’t give him a room, wouldn’t even allow him to walk through the hall.”

  “You haven’t seen him recently?”

  “No. If I did run into him, I’d start by asking him for the hundred lire he borrowed from me years ago and never returned.”