Signed, Picpus Read online

  ‘So you’re saying that it would have been quite impossible for your clerk to steal a thousand francs?’

  ‘Strictly impossible … Furthermore, as I have told you, Mascouvin’s character … No, inspector! … You are barking up the wrong tree … I’m sorry, but …’

  He gets to his feet and intimates that he has important clients waiting.

  ‘Just one other small question, which I think does not infringe client confidentiality. Is Monsieur Blaise a big client here?’

  Drouin hesitates. But to get rid of this policeman he is prepared to answer.

  ‘A big client, no. His bank references are certainly excellent. Details of that sort you would be given by any financial agency. But a big client in our terms, no. More a nuisance, actually, without wishing to say anything to his detriment. It’s the sort of thing that often happens … especially with investors who have nothing much to do with their time. For them it’s a hobby … He turns up. He asks about current operations, he goes and views land and houses for sale, argues about prices as if he were buying. Most of the time, he does not make up his mind … As a matter of fact …’

  He takes out a manila file with the name of Monsieur Blaise and a number on it.

  ‘Over a period of five years, he has, through us, acquired three properties: a modest house, a small farm in Brittany and an apartment block in Nice. Total cost, six hundred thousand francs … And that, inspector, is all I am able to tell you … You must forgive me, but my time, like yours, is valuable …’

  He does not hold out his hand and closes the door behind Maigret with evident relief.

  Why on earth did Mascouvin, who was not being questioned about any such thing, put his hand up to stealing a thousand francs from his employer?

  It is a worried Maigret who walks into his office. The clerk informs him that the examining magistrate has been waiting for him for more than an hour. Someone else who must be getting impatient, thinking that the case is dragging on, talking about the press and the adverse coverage, and wanting action.

  Pipe in mouth, Maigret heads straight for the corridor where the offices of the examining magistrates are located. It is crowded with remand prisoners with police escorts, and witnesses who keep looking at their watches, all waiting in a hothouse atmosphere.

  ‘Come in, detective chief inspector. Have a seat. I have read the report you submitted yesterday evening very carefully. We discussed it this morning with the deputy public prosecutor. He shares my view completely. Either this Octave Le Cloaguen of yours …’

  Why of yours?

  ‘Either this Octave Le Cloaguen of yours is really mad or else, if he is not guilty, which I am beginning to doubt, he knows a lot more than he is saying. Which is why I have this morning issued an order notifying him that at three o’clock this afternoon he is to be examined by two psychiatrists assisted by Dr Paul … What is your view?’

  He is sure of himself. It is almost as if he is challenging the inspector, as if he is saying: ‘Of course, it is well known that you have your methods. But they are slow, my dear Maigret! They are antiquated. An examining magistrate is not necessarily a fool, and, without leaving his desk, he can get to the bottom of cases which leave the police floundering …’

  Maigret smokes his pipe in silence. It is impossible to read his thoughts.

  ‘At the same time, I sent a rogatory commission to Saint-Raphaël, asking them to gather information about the kind of life the Le Cloaguens led there …’

  Maigret’s failure to respond is making him nervous. Is the inspector about to take umbrage at this interference and let him get on with it all by himself?

  ‘Sorry about this. I’m sure you’ll agree that with cases like these, which drag on, stir up public opinion and …’

  ‘You have acted very helpfully, sir. But I wonder …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing … I’m probably wrong …’

  The truth is that he is worried. In his mind’s eye he can see the old man in his office the evening before, the clenched hands, tears rolling down his cheeks and with that helpless look which seems to be pleading for a little warmth and kindness from a fellow human being.

  How curious: the examining magistrate hadn’t been so wrong from the start after all when he’d said ‘this Octave Le Cloaguen of yours’ …

  ‘What time did he receive the summons to appear?’

  ‘Let’s see … It’s eleven now … The special messenger must have rung the bell in Boulevard des Batignolles at about ten thirty …’

  ‘Where will the psychiatric examination take place?’

  ‘In the Le Cloaguens’ apartment in the first instance. If the medics think it necessary, they’ll take the old man to one of their clinics. Will you be there?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘In that case, detective chief inspector, I shall see you later …’

  It’s true, Maigret is more than a little put out that anyone should have thought fit to take such a step without consulting him. Still, it is the case that he was late getting to Quai des Orfèvres and that he had been sent for …

  But that is not all that is making him more weary, more disgruntled. It seems to him … How could it be put? … His Le Cloaguen … Yes, that’s it! … It seems to him that he is the only one who can lay bare the strange old man’s soul … From the start, from his visit to Rue Coulaincourt, he has been unsettled by the man, and he thinks about him all the time, whatever he is doing. He was thinking about him earlier when he discovered that Picpus was a vulgar, winking travesty, and still thinking about him in Monsieur Drouin’s office whereas all his thoughts seemed to be about Mascouvin and Monsieur Blaise.

  ‘Come in here, Lucas …’

  Lucas is almost certainly aware of the measures which have been taken, for he does not look his chief directly in the eye.

  ‘Who’s on duty in Boulevard des Batignolles this morning? …’

  ‘Janvier …’

  As he stands before the wide-open window, a couplet learned by heart at school comes back to him unexpectedly:

  Though storm at sea may rage no more

  The sailor’s widow weeps by the shore.

  Isn’t that also true in some degree of himself? The Seine flows on, wrapped in a veritable aura of absolute glory. The spectacle of pedestrians scuttling like ants is enough to make it seem as if the whole of Paris has surrendered to the sheer joy of being alive. Elsewhere anglers are fishing, the swimming pools are crowded with bathers, a symphony of car horns fills streets and boulevards and rises with the fine, golden dust into a sky of perfect blue.

  Though storm at sea …

  What a strange job he does! Two strikes with a knife in the back of a woman he has never met … An old man who sweats with fear … A clerk who jumps off the Pont-Neuf into the Seine … A calendar of stunning vulgarity in a café in Place de la République …

  ‘What do we do now, sir?’

  ‘What about Monsieur Blaise?’

  ‘Around now he’ll be heading to the Stock Exchange, just as he does every day … Ruel is tailing him …’

  The search for the green convertible and the dark man with the gold teeth has drawn a blank. Emma, the girl from the dairy, spends every day with an eye on the street, where she still hopes to see her handsome motorist drive up, and has failed to recognize him in any of the photographs she has been shown.

  ‘Will you get me the travel agent’s near the Madeleine …’

  He is still worried. He picks up the phone.

  ‘Hello? … Mademoiselle Berthe? … It’s Maigret … Yes … No, no … On the contrary … He’s getting along well, give him a few days and he’ll be over it … What time do you finish work? … Twelve? … Would you find it too dull to have lunch with me in some small restaurant near you? … Didn’t catch … Good … I’ll see you later …’

  He takes a taxi and gets out at the hour when, as on most days of the week, workers from the offices around the Madeleine and the Bo
ulevards are flooding out into the streets. He soon spots the little red hat and the fresh face with dimples, which now has a careworn look.

  ‘You can take it from me, nothing terrible is happening … It was just that I wanted to talk to you …’

  Passers-by turn to look at the two of them and tell each other that there’s one middle-aged man who has the luck of the devil …

  ‘Do you like hors-d’oeuvres?’

  ‘Very much …’

  He chooses a small restaurant frequented by regulars, which has a wide selection of tasty hors-d’oeuvres. They find a table near the window. It could be a cosy tête-à-tête and all the more so because Maigret orders a bottle of Alsace wine, the long neck of which rises out of an ice-bucket.

  ‘Tell me, Mademoiselle Berthe, after your parents died and you continued your studies with financial help from Mascouvin … Would you like a few mushrooms? … As I was saying … I assume he paid for you to board somewhere?’

  ‘With nuns, at Montmorency.’

  ‘That must have been expensive, I imagine?’

  ‘I felt very bad about it. I knew he didn’t earn much. But he believed he owed so much to our family. I’m sure there were times when he skipped meals so that he could pay for my keep …’

  ‘You stayed there until what age?’

  ‘Eighteen … As I told you, I wanted to live with him, it would have been cheaper, but he wouldn’t hear of it. It was then that he began renting a small apartment for me in Les Ternes.’

  ‘Furnished, I assume?’

  ‘No. He wasn’t keen on furnished apartments. He reckoned they don’t do anything for a girl’s reputation and said they are always fairly sad places and not very clean.’

  ‘That was around five years ago,’ murmured Maigret.

  ‘That’s correct. You’ve worked it out. I’m twenty-three now …’

  ‘Tell me, would you mind very much after lunch showing an old gent like me round the apartment?’

  ‘I’d love to … But I don’t see … What shall I tell the concierge?’

  ‘Tell her I’m a friend of Mascouvin … She does know, I suppose, that he is really more or less your half-brother? … Oh please, do eat up. I’m spoiling your appetite with all my absurd questions …’

  Other men, the same age as him, are also having lunch in the restaurant with women as young and almost as attractive.

  ‘But you must … I insist you choose a dessert …’

  Someone waves a greeting, someone he doesn’t know or rather doesn’t recognize straight away, and he waves back. It is a few minutes later when he remembers the man, a more than shady banker he has sent to the Santé prison on two separate occasions.

  Taxi … The girl looks at her watch …

  ‘We’ll have to be quick. I have to be back in the office at two.’

  A quiet street after all the bustle of Place des Ternes.

  ‘This is it. There’s a lift.’

  On the fifth floor, three rooms, minute certainly, but bright and cheerful and entirely consistent with Mademoiselle Berthe’s youth.

  ‘As you see, it’s very simple. I didn’t want him to go to the expense. But he said it was a bargain and that he’d persuaded the landlord to let him pay in monthly instalments …’

  Maigret was expecting to find department store furniture but it proves to be otherwise. It is not great luxury, but every piece is of good quality … Twenty thousand? … Twenty-five? …

  ‘Would you like to see the kitchen? I cook for myself in the evening. The sink has hot water. And instead of dustbins …’

  Proudly she slides open a panel to reveal a kind of large waste disposal duct.

  ‘It’s quarter to two … If the bus doesn’t come straight away …’

  ‘I’ll take you back in a taxi.’

  ‘You mustn’t drop me at the door … My work colleagues might think …’

  Mascouvin … Le Cloaguen … Mascouvin … Le Cloaguen … Those are the two names which invariably thrust themselves to the forefront of Maigret’s mind. Even when he tries to focus on the man with the brace of pike. The figure of Monsieur Blaise is always pushed to the back, effaced, perhaps because the inspector has not detected the same human vulnerability in him?

  ‘Thanks for the lovely lunch, inspector … You are sure, aren’t you, that Joseph? …’

  At tables outside cafés, people are busy digesting over-ample lunches. Others, in packed buses, are heading for the race-courses.

  Preferring to walk, because he is in no hurry, Maigret strolls up Boulevard Malesherbes, along Avenue de Villiers and reaches Boulevard des Batignolles at about two thirty. He looks around briefly for Janvier.

  The latter calls to him from a small lorry-drivers’ café-restaurant, where he is sitting at a table with the remains of lunch and a glass of calvados in front of him.

  ‘Fancy a calva, sir? It’s not bad. Nothing much to report this morning. The old man went out for his walk as usual at about eight thirty and, after finding a local uniformed officer to keep an eye on the house, I followed. We covered a lot of ground at a leisurely amble, as far as the Bois de Boulogne and back via the Porte Maillot … He returned home without speaking to anybody at a few minutes before noon.’

  ‘What does the man in uniform say?’

  ‘I questioned him before I took over from him. The ladies haven’t gone out. Meat and vegetables were delivered. They must have phoned their orders to their usual suppliers. Around ten, a messenger on a bike from the Palais de Justice …’

  ‘I know …’

  ‘In that case you know everything. It was quite late when I came in here because there’s a building site round the corner, and the men working on it come here to eat. There wasn’t a table free. I went out and phoned in from Place Clichy … What do you make of this calvados? Quite decent, isn’t it? I always think that it’s lorry-drivers’ cafés where you …’

  A car pulls up outside the house opposite. Maigret stands up.

  ‘I’ll let you pay. I’ll see you later …’

  ‘You want me to stay here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A second car follows closely behind the first. In it are two middle-aged men and a strapping fellow who must be a nurse. He carries a voluminous medical case. From the first vehicle steps the examining magistrate accompanied by Dr Paul, the police pathologist.

  ‘Ah, Maigret! Hello! … I didn’t know I’d find you here … So … Is he mad? Is he not mad? You must have an opinion … How are you, Professor? … Hello, Delavigne … What happened about the man who’d lost his memory? Trying it on, was he?’

  They exchange greetings on the pavement. Introductions are made. The mood is good-humoured, and no one would suspect these sober, elderly men are there to rule whether a fellow human being should remain at liberty or not.

  ‘Shall we go up? You lead the way, detective chief inspector, you’ve been here before …’

  The stained-glass windows lining the staircase sprinkle their faces with colour. There are splashes of blood red and other hues that gleam like bright gold coins. Maigret rings the bell. A sound of footsteps inside the apartment. Eventually the door opens.

  ‘After you, gentlemen,’ says the inspector, standing to one side.

  Madame Le Cloaguen repeats:

  ‘Do come in …’

  What is wrong? She seems uneasy. She shows them into the drawing room. Then she turns to Maigret, the only one of the visitors she knows.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Who do you mean? These gentlemen, as you know, have come to examine your husband’s mental state. You have received a notification to that effect, which was sent to you by the examining magistrate, who is here …’

  ‘Is that what it was?’

  ‘Come now, madame. This morning, at about ten o’clock, while Monsieur Le Cloaguen was out on his walk, a messenger on a bicycle handed you an official letter …’

  ‘Yes … but it was addressed to my husband.’

  ‘Y
ou didn’t open it? … Don’t you know what it said?’

  ‘I am not in the habit of reading letters which are not addressed to me. I put the envelope down – it was yellow as I remember – here … See for yourself …’

  She opens the door, points to a low antique table in the hallway, and there indeed, under it, they see the yellow envelope with the prosecutor’s office’s name printed on it. It is empty.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I have no idea. My husband came back from his walk, as usual, for lunch …’

  ‘Did he read the letter?’

  ‘I imagine he did since neither I nor my daughter opened it. The three of us had lunch together. I don’t even know if the dining table has been cleared … No … Our maid is on holiday …’

  She opens another door to the dining room. Three places can be seen still laid, a bowl of fruit and remnants of a cheese board.

  ‘You can see for yourselves. Afterwards, I thought Octave went for a nap in his room. He keeps very much to himself … very much …’

  She is patently not afraid of irony, given that it is her custom to shut the old man up by himself like some naughty schoolboy!

  ‘Is he not in his room?’

  ‘I just looked … No … Moreover, his overcoat is not hanging on the hallstand. He must have gone out …’

  ‘What time did you last see him?’

  ‘We finished lunch at a quarter to one. We eat early. But won’t you tell me what these gentlemen …’