Maigret's Mistake Page 8

  He took one of the cars and had himself driven to Rue Nollet, behind Place Clichy, where Lulu’s cleaning lady lived. The building was in a state of disrepair and clearly hadn’t received a coat of paint in more than twenty years. The families crammed into it overflowed on to the landings, with children playing on the stairs.

  Madame Brault lived on the fourth floor, on the courtyard side. There was no lift, and the stairs were steep. Maigret had to stop twice on the way up, sniffing more or less pleasant smells.

  ‘Who is it?’ cried a voice when he knocked at the door. ‘Come in. I can’t open.’

  She was in the kitchen, in her slip, barefoot, doing her washing in a galvanized iron bowl. She didn’t look surprised when she saw Maigret, didn’t say hello, merely waited for him to speak.

  ‘I dropped by to see you.’

  ‘Well, well!’

  Because of the washing, the windowpanes were all steamed up. There was the sound of snoring in the next room, where Maigret noticed the foot of a bed, and Madame Brault went and shut the door.

  ‘My husband’s asleep,’ she said.

  ‘Drunk?’

  ‘Just for a change.’

  ‘When I spoke to you yesterday, why didn’t you tell me who Lulu’s long-term lover was?’

  ‘Because you didn’t ask me. I remember it perfectly well. You asked me if I’d ever seen a man visiting her.’

  ‘And you never saw him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you knew it was the professor?’

  From her manner, it was clear that she knew a lot more. Only, she wouldn’t say anything, unless she was forced to. Not because she herself had anything to hide. Nor, probably, because she was protecting someone. In her case, it was a matter of principle not to help the police, which was quite natural, when it came down to it, given that they had been hounding her all her life. She didn’t like policemen. They were her natural enemies.

  ‘Did your employer talk to you about him?’

  ‘From time to time.’

  ‘What did she tell you about him?’

  ‘She told me so many things!’

  ‘Did she want to leave him?’

  ‘I don’t know if she really wanted to leave him, but she wasn’t happy in the building.’

  Without being asked, he had sat down on a chair, making its straw bottom creak.

  ‘What was stopping her from leaving?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her.’

  ‘Was she in love with Pierrot?’

  ‘That’s the impression I got.’

  ‘Did she get a lot of money from Gouin?’

  ‘He gave her money when she wanted it.’

  ‘Did she want it often?’

  ‘As soon as there was none left in the apartment. Sometimes I only found small notes in her bag and in the drawer when I was about to go shopping. I’d tell her, and she’d say, “I’ll ask for some later.” ’

  ‘Did she give some of it to Pierrot?’

  ‘That’s none of my business. If she’d been smarter …’

  She broke off.

  ‘What would have happened?’

  ‘First of all, she would never have gone to live in that building, where she seemed like a prisoner.’

  ‘Didn’t he let her go out?’

  ‘Most of the time, she was the one who didn’t dare go out, for fear that monsieur might suddenly decide to drop by and say hello. She wasn’t his mistress, she was a kind of maid, except that what he expected of her wasn’t to work, but to go to bed with him. If she’d continued to have an apartment somewhere else and it was him who had to make an effort … But what’s the point of all this? What exactly do you want of me?’

  ‘Information.’

  ‘Today, you come for information and you take your hat off. Tomorrow, if I’m unfortunate enough to stop at a shop counter, you’ll have me thrown in jail. What information do you need?’

  She was hanging up her washing on a line that crossed the kitchen.

  ‘Did you know that Lulu was pregnant?’

  She turned abruptly.

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘The post-mortem.’

  ‘So she wasn’t wrong.’

  ‘When did she tell you?’

  ‘Maybe three days before someone put a bullet in her head.’

  ‘Wasn’t she sure?’

  ‘No. She hadn’t yet been to the doctor. She was afraid of going.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For fear of being disappointed, I suppose.’

  ‘She wanted a child?’

  ‘I think she was pleased to be pregnant. It was still too early to celebrate. I told her that these days doctors have a thing that can tell you for sure, even after two or three weeks.’

  ‘Did she go to see a doctor?’

  ‘She asked me if I knew one, and I gave her the address of someone I know near here, in Rue des Dames.’

  ‘Do you know if she saw him?’

  ‘If she did, she didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Did Pierrot know?’

  ‘Do you know anything about women? Have you ever met a woman who talks about these things to a man before she’s sure?’

  ‘So you don’t think she told the professor either?’

  ‘Try to use your common sense.’

  ‘What do you think would have happened if she hadn’t been killed?’

  ‘I can’t read tea leaves.’

  ‘Would she have kept the child?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Would she have stayed with the professor?’

  ‘Unless she’d left with Pierrot.’

  ‘Who do you think was the father?’

  This time, too, she looked at him as if he knew nothing about anything.

  ‘You don’t imagine it was the old man?’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘You read about it in the newspapers. Only, as women aren’t cows who are kept in a shed and led to the bull once a year, it’s hard to swear on anything.’

  In the next room, her husband was moving on the bed and groaning. She went and opened the door.

  ‘Hold on, Jules, I’m with someone! I’ll bring you your drink in a few minutes.’

  And turning to Maigret:

  ‘Do you have any more questions?’

  ‘Not exactly. Did you hate Professor Gouin?’

  ‘I told you, I never saw him.’

  ‘But you hated him anyway?’

  ‘I hate all those people.’

  ‘Supposing when you got there in the morning you saw a gun in Lulu’s hand, or on the carpet, within easy reach of that hand. Wouldn’t you have been tempted to get rid of it, so as to rule out suicide and get the professor into trouble?’

  ‘Don’t you ever get tired? Do you think I’m so stupid that I don’t know that, when the police have the choice between a big shot and a poor devil of a musician like Pierrot, it’s the poor devil they’ll go after?’

  She poured some coffee into a bowl, sugared it and called to her husband:

  ‘I’m coming!’

  Maigret didn’t insist. It was only when he was at the door that he turned and asked her for the name and address of the doctor in Rue des Dames.

  The doctor’s name was Duclos. He hadn’t been practising there for long. In fact, he had probably only just qualified, because his consulting room was almost bare, with merely the essential instruments, all second-hand. When Maigret told him who he was, he seemed to understand immediately.

  ‘I knew somebody would come and see me sooner or later.’

  ‘Did she give you her name?’

  ‘Yes. I even filled out her record.’

  ‘How long had she known she was pregnant?’

  The doctor seemed more like a student and, to make himself look important, consulted his almost empty patient files.

  ‘She came on Saturday. She was sent by a woman I treated.’

  ‘Madame Brault, I know.’

  ‘She told me she might be pregnant and she need
ed to be sure.’

  ‘Hold on a moment. Did she seem worried?’

  ‘I can only reply no. When a girl like her asks me that question, I expect her to ask me if I’ll do what I have to do to give her an abortion. That happens twenty times a week. I don’t know if it’s the same in other neighbourhoods. Anyway, I gave her a thorough examination. I asked her for the usual urine sample. She wanted to know what happened then, and I explained about the rabbit test.’

  ‘What was her reaction?’

  ‘She wanted to know if we had to kill the rabbit. I told her to come back on Monday afternoon.’

  ‘Did she come?’

  ‘Yes, at half past five. I told her she was well and truly pregnant, and she thanked me.’

  ‘Did she say anything else?’

  ‘She asked me if I was absolutely sure, and I said I was.’

  ‘Did she seem happy?’

  ‘I’d swear she did.’

  So at about six o’clock on Monday Lulu had left Rue des Dames and gone back to Avenue Carnot. At about eight, having finished dinner, the professor, according to Madame Gouin, spent a few minutes in the apartment on the fourth floor, then went to the hospital.

  Up until about ten o’clock, Louise Filon had been alone at home. She had eaten tinned lobster and drunk a little wine. Apparently she had then gone to bed, since the bed had been found unmade; not untidy, as if she had slept with a man, but simply unmade.

  By then, Pierrot was already at the Grelot, and she could have telephoned him immediately. But she hadn’t called him until about 9.30.

  Was it to tell him the news that she had made him come all the way to the Étoile during his work hours? If so, why had she waited so long?

  Pierrot had jumped in a taxi. According to the concierge, he had stayed in the apartment for about twenty minutes.

  Gouin, according to both the concierge and his wife, had come back from the hospital just after eleven and hadn’t dropped in on his mistress.

  The following morning, at eight o’clock, Madame Brault, arriving to do her work, had found Louise dead on the sofa in the living room. She claimed there was no weapon near the body.

  Dr Paul, always cautious in his conclusions, placed the time of death between nine and eleven. Because of the phone call to the Grelot, you could substitute 9.30 for nine.

  As for the fingerprints found in the apartment, they belonged to only four people: Lulu herself, the cleaning lady, the professor and Pierre Eyraud. Moers had sent someone to Cochin to photograph Gouin’s prints on a form he had just signed at the hospital. For the three others, they hadn’t had to go to any trouble, given that they all had criminal records.

  Lulu had obviously not expected to be attacked, since she had been shot at close range.

  The apartment had not been ransacked, which indicated that the killer had not killed for money, or to get hold of some document or other.

  ‘Many thanks, doctor. I assume that after her visit nobody came to question you about her? And nobody phoned you to talk to you about her?’

  ‘No. When I read in the newspaper that she’d been killed, I expected a visit from the police, given that it was her cleaning lady who sent her to me and she must have known. To tell the truth, if you hadn’t come this morning, I had the intention, just in case, of phoning you in the afternoon.’

  Soon afterwards, Maigret telephoned Madame Gouin from a bistro in Rue des Dames. She recognized his voice and didn’t seem surprised.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘You told me yesterday that your sister works in a library. May I ask you which one?’

  ‘The municipal library on Place Saint-Sulpice.’

  ‘Many thanks.’

  ‘Have you found out anything?’

  ‘Only that Louise Filon was pregnant.’

  ‘Oh!’

  He was sorry he had mentioned it over the phone, unable as he was to judge her reaction.

  ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Yes, it does, rather … It’s probably ridiculous, but you never expect that of certain women. You forget they’re built just like the rest of us.’

  ‘Do you know if your husband was aware of the fact?’

  ‘He would have told me.’

  ‘Has he ever had children?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Didn’t he want them?’

  ‘I don’t think he cared one way or the other. The fact is, we haven’t had any. Probably my doing.’

  The little black car took him to Place Saint-Sulpice, which, for no clear reason, was the Paris square he hated the most. Whenever he was there, he had the impression of being somewhere in the provinces. Even the shops struck him as looking different, and the passers-by seemed slower and drabber.

  The library was particularly drab, dimly lit and as silent as an empty church. At this hour, there were only three or four people, regulars probably, looking through the dusty books.

  Antoinette Ollivier, Madame Gouin’s sister, watched him advance towards her. She looked older than her fifty years and had the somewhat contemptuous self-confidence of those women who think they know the truth about everything.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret of the Police Judiciaire.’

  ‘I recognized you from your photographs.’

  As in church, she spoke in a low voice, although he was reminded more of a school than a church when she invited him to sit down at the green baize table that served as her desk. She was fatter than her sister Germaine, but it was a kind of fat that seemed barely alive, and her skin was a neutral colour like that of some nuns.

  ‘I assume you’re here to ask me some questions?’

  ‘You assume correctly. Your sister told me you paid her a visit yesterday evening.’

  ‘That’s right. I arrived at about half past eight and left at half past eleven, immediately after that man came home.’

  She must have thought it the height of contempt to not even utter her brother-in-law’s name, and she seemed quite pleased with the words that man, detaching the syllables.

  ‘Do you often spend the evening with your sister?’

  For some reason, it struck Maigret that she was on her guard and that she would be even more reticent than the concierge or Madame Brault.

  The others responded cautiously because they were afraid of harming the professor.

  This woman, on the contrary, was probably afraid of exonerating him.

  ‘No, not often,’ she replied reluctantly.

  ‘Meaning once every six months, once a year, once every two years?’

  ‘Perhaps once a year.’

  ‘Did you fix an appointment?’

  ‘You don’t fix an appointment with your sister.’

  ‘So you went there without knowing if she was going to be in? Do you have a telephone in your apartment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t call your sister?’

  ‘She called me.’

  ‘To ask you to come over?’

  ‘It wasn’t as specific as that. She talked about various things.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Family things, mainly. She doesn’t write much. I’m more in contact with our other brothers and sisters than she is.’

  ‘Did she say she’d like to see you?’

  ‘More or less. She asked me if I was free.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘About half past six. I’d just got home and was making dinner.’

  ‘Were you surprised?’

  ‘No. I simply made sure he wouldn’t be there. What has he told you?’

  ‘You mean Professor Gouin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I haven’t questioned him yet.’

  ‘Is that because you assume he’s innocent? Because he’s a famous surgeon, a member of the Academy of Medicine and—’

  Although she hadn’t raised her voice, it had become more resonant with emotion now.

  ‘What happened when you got to Avenue Car
not?’ he cut in.

  ‘I went upstairs, kissed my sister on the cheek and took off my hat and coat.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘To the little room next to Germaine’s bedroom, the one she calls her boudoir. There’s something sinister about the big drawing room, and it’s almost never used.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What two sisters our age do when they see each other after several months. We chatted. I gave her the news about everybody. In particular, I told her about François, a nephew of ours who was ordained a priest a year ago and is about to leave for Northern Canada as a missionary.’

  ‘Did you have anything to drink?’

  The question surprised her, shocked her to the point that her cheeks turned red. ‘We had a cup of coffee to start with.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I sneezed several times. I told my sister I was afraid I might have caught a head cold coming out of the Métro, where the heat was stifling. It was too hot at my sister’s, too.’

  ‘Were the servants in the apartment?’

  ‘They both went upstairs at about nine, after coming to say goodnight. My sister has had the same cook for twelve years. The maids change more often, for an obvious reason.’

  He didn’t ask the reason; he had understood.

  ‘So, you sneezed …’

  ‘Germaine suggested a couple of toddies and went to the kitchen to make them.’

  ‘What did you do during that time?’

  ‘I read a magazine article in which there was a mention of our village.’

  ‘Was your sister absent for a long time?’

  ‘Long enough to boil two glasses of water.’

  ‘The other times you were there, did you wait for your brother-in-law to get home before you left?’

  ‘I avoid meeting him as much as possible.’

  ‘Were you surprised when you saw him come in?’

  ‘My sister had assured me he wouldn’t be back before midnight.’

  ‘How did he seem?’

  ‘The way he always does, like a man who thinks he’s above the rules of morality and decency.’

  ‘You didn’t notice anything special about him?’

  ‘I didn’t bother to look at him. I put on my hat and coat and slammed the door on my way out.’

  ‘During the evening, did you hear any noise that might have been a gunshot?’

  ‘No. Until about eleven, someone was playing the piano in the building, on the floor above. I recognized Chopin.’