Maigret and the Spinster (14 page)

“In that case…What’s his name?”

“Charles Dandurand.”

Ten minutes later, Maigret and Spencer Oats got into the taxi on the Quai des Orfèvres in which the two technicians from the Forensic Laboratory were waiting. It was shortly after ten when the taxi drew up at Bourg-la-Reine. Juliette Boynet’s house was shrouded in a Scotch mist, so that it looked blurred and much faded, as in an old photograph.

“Wait for me upstairs on the fifth-floor landing,” said Maigret to the technicians.

He rang Dandurand’s bell. Berger, who had dark rings under his eyes from lack of sleep, came to the door.

“Haven’t you brought any food?”

Monsieur Charles had taken off his collar. He had the crumpled look of a man who has slept in his clothes. He was wearing a pair of old bedroom slippers.

“I presume…” he began.

“I shouldn’t presume anything if I were you, Monsieur Dandurand. You’re almost sure to get it wrong. I have here a warrant for your arrest, duly signed by the examining magistrate assigned to the case.”

“Ah!”

“You don’t sound surprised…”

“No…I’m sorry for you, that’s all.”

“Have you nothing to say before you leave? You will be kept in custody at the Santé…”

“All I have to say is that you are making a mistake.”

“Aren’t you forgetting what you did yesterday in Juliette Boynet’s bedroom, while I was on the telephone in here?”

A bitter smile flickered over the unshaven face of the man.

“Stay with him, Berger…See that he gets dressed. When he’s ready, take him to the Préfecture and book him.”

Abruptly, he turned around, seized the kid by her thin shoulders, and said angrily:

“Listen to me, Nouchi, if you get under my feet just once more…”

“What will you do to me?” she asked, thrilled.

“You’ll see, and it will be no joke!…Be off with you!”

He went upstairs and proceeded to open the door of the fifth-floor apartment.

“Now, this is what I want you fellows to do…Careful, Monsieur Spencer, don’t go in there…”

“But we’ve already fingerprinted the whole apartment,” objected the photographer.

“On the day after the murder. Quite right…And only two sets of prints were found in Juliette Boynet’s bedroom, her own and Cécile’s. There were no men’s fingerprints, none of Gérard Pardon’s, and none of that sorry rogue’s downstairs…But it so happens that last night, while I was speaking on the phone in his study, he came into this room. I’m sure of that because I could hear his footsteps…I don’t know what he was up to…but he was taking a grave risk, so he must have had some very compelling reason. I want you to find out what he touched…so get going! Now do you see why I asked you not to go into that room, Monsieur Spencer?”

The technicians had set up their apparatus, and were getting down to the job. Maigret, his hands in his pockets, wandered from room to room.

“It’s not a very pretty story, is it? A miserly, crazy old woman…a girl, or rather a somewhat faded young woman, none too generously endowed by nature. Will you come downstairs for a moment?”

They reached Monsieur Charles’s apartment just as he was leaving, wearing a hat and coat, in company with Inspector Berger.

“Don’t worry about your things, Monsieur Dandurand. I’ll take charge of the key to your apartment. Incidentally, you will presumably be appointing a lawyer very shortly to represent you. I shall expect to see him here.”

Whereupon he shut the door and went not into the study of the former lawyer but into his bedroom.

“Take a seat, Monsieur Spencer…Listen…”

“You can hear every word that’s said up there.”

“Correct! I don’t know what your new houses are like in America, but ours are about as soundproof as cigar boxes…Pay no attention to their footsteps. See if you can make out what they’re doing…”

“It sounds as if…that’s odd. It’s much more difficult…”

“I agree with you…There, now! Someone is fiddling with a drawer…He’s opening it…But can you tell which drawer it is?”

“It’s not possible…”

“Right! That settles one point. From his own apartment, Dandurand could hear every word that was spoken on the floor above. He could judge more or less where everyone in Juliette Boynet’s household happened to be at any given time. On the other hand, the precise details of who was doing what…I only hope that idiot Gérard hasn’t thrown himself into the Seine!”

“But you say he’s innocent!”

“I said I believed he was…Unfortunately, I’m not infallible…I also pointed out that innocent people often behave as if they were guilty…I hope Berthe is still with his wife. At any moment she may give birth to a bouncing boy.”

Above their heads, furniture was being dragged across the floor.

“If you were a miser, Monsieur Spencer…”

“There are no misers in the States…Miserliness is a characteristic of a mature civilization. We haven’t reached that stage yet.”

“In that case, let us suppose that you are an old woman, an old Frenchwoman…You are in possession of millions, and yet your life style is no more lavish than that of any widow living on a small, fixed income…”

“I find that difficult to imagine…”

“Make an effort. Your only pleasure in life is counting the bills that represent your life savings. That is the problem that has haunted me for the past three days, because, you see, a man’s life depends upon it. Find where the money is hidden and you find the killer.”

“I suppose…” began the American.

“You suppose what?” interrupted Maigret, almost aggressively.

“If I were such a person as you have described…I would keep my money where I could readily lay my hands on it at all times.”

“That’s exactly what I thought…but wait! Although considerably handicapped, Juliette Boynet was nevertheless able to get around in the apartment. She would stay in bed in the mornings until about ten, when her niece would bring in her breakfast and the morning paper.”

“Maybe she hid the money in her bed? I seem to have heard somewhere that it’s common practice in France to sew one’s savings into one’s mattress.”

“The only thing is that, for the rest of the day, until she returned to bed at night, Juliette spent her time in the sitting room…Just before she died, she had eight hundred thousand francs in the house, in thousand-franc bills. That many bills would be quite bulky. Now, listen carefully. There are only two people who could have known where that money was hidden. The old woman’s niece, Cécile, who lived with her. She was not in her aunt’s confidence, but she might accidentally have…”

“Monsieur Dandurand, on the other hand, was in the old lady’s confidence, wasn’t he?”

“Only to some extent…You can take it from me, he didn’t know where she kept the money. Women like Juliette Boynet don’t trust anybody, not even their guardian angels! Still, as you yourself have noticed, you can’t make a sound up there that isn’t heard in this room…Let’s go up, shall we? If the telephone rings, we shall hear it.”

It was such a humid day that the banister rail was sticky to the touch. In the piano teacher’s apartment, a pupil was playing scales. The Hungarians were quarreling, and Nouchi’s shrill voice was clearly to be heard.

“Well, boys?”

“It’s amazing, Chief…”

“What is?”

“Are you sure the fellow wasn’t wearing rubber gloves?”

“I know for certain he wasn’t.”

“He walked on the carpet…But up to now, we haven’t found any sign that he touched anything, apart from the door knob. In fact, the only prints we’ve found are yours.”

A powerful spotlight had been plugged into the outlet. The presence of cameras gave a different feel to the room which Juliette Boynet had occupied for so many years.

“She used a cane, didn’t she?” the American asked suddenly.

Maigret whipped around as if he had been stung.

“Wait…The thing that…”

What was the one thing that the old woman could take with her everywhere, from her bedroom into the sitting room and from there into the dining room at mealtimes? Her cane, of course! But it would not be possible to hide eight hundred thousand francs in thousand-franc bills in a cane, even if it were hollow!

The Chief Superintendent took another searching look at the contents of the room.

“What about this?” he asked suddenly, pointing to a small, low, boxlike object, covered in worn tapestry, which Juliette Boynet had probably used as a footstool. “Any prints?”

“Not a thing, Chief.”

Maigret picked it up and put it on the bed. He felt along the row of brass studs securing the tapestry, and was able to raise the top, which formed a kind of lid. The interior was lined with a copper receptacle, and had obviously been intended originally as a foot warmer, to be filled with charcoal.

There was a silence. Everyone was staring at a parcel, wrapped in an old newspaper, which was wedged into the copper liner.

“The eight hundred bills must be in here,” said Maigret at last, relighting his pipe. “Look, Monsieur Spencer…And please don’t mention this to your colleagues at the Institute of Criminology, it would be too embarrassing. I had the mattress ripped open and the boxspring taken apart, I had the walls tapped, and the floorboards and the fireplace. And it never occurred to me that an old woman with swollen legs, having to hobble about on a cane, might have this footling little bit of furniture taken from room to room to rest her feet on. Careful with that newspaper! You fellows had better give it a thorough going-over…”

Maigret, wrapped in his own thoughts, spent the next ten minutes setting all the clocks right, as a result of which they all chimed one after another.

“We’re done, Chief.”

“Are his prints on it?”

“They are…As for the bills, there are eight hundred and ten of them.”

“I shall need envelopes and sealing wax.”

When the whole of the little fortune was safely under seal, he telephoned the Public Prosecutor’s office and arranged for a senior official to come and collect it.

“Will you come with me, Monsieur Spencer?”

Outside in the street, he turned up the collar of his overcoat.

“It’s a pity we didn’t keep the taxi…But believe it or not, if I’m terrified of anyone, it’s those fellows in our accounts department. I don’t know if they’re as ferocious over expenses in the United States…How about dropping into that bistro over there for a glass of something, while we’re waiting for our streetcar? It’s where all the local workmen eat…But you’ve left your hat behind!”

“I never wear a hat.”

The Chief Superintendent stared hard at the shock of red hair spattered with glistening beads of rain. There were no two ways about it, some things Maigret would never understand!

“I’ll have a Calvados. What about you?”

“Would they have such a thing as a glass of milk, I wonder?”

Maybe that explained how a man of thirty-five had managed to retain a complexion as rosy as the muzzle of a young calf.

“A large glass, barman!”

“Of milk?”

“No! Of Calvados!”

Painstakingly, Maigret pushed fresh tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. Had that cold-blooded scoundrel Dandurand returned the eight hundred thousand francs to their hiding place in the old woman’s footstool, and thereby put his life in jeopardy?

T
he two men had just left the office of the registrar. At first, Maigret’s inquiries had been met with a curt refusal to divulge information from a clerk with bad teeth. When the Chief Superintendent had produced his badge, however, the man had responded with such feverish zeal that it had taken him twice as long as necessary to search through the bulky volumes of the register.

The town hall was neither old nor new. It was ugly, ugly as a whole, ugly in every part, ugly in its proportions and in the materials used in its construction. The clock was just striking twelve when Maigret and his American friend, along with most of the town-hall staff, emerged from the building. The gentleman with the bulging stomach, three chins, and slovenly appearance whom everyone treated with deference was presumably none other than the mayor of Bourg-la-Reine.

The Chief Superintendent and his companion stood for a moment at the top of the four or five steps leading up to the portico, waiting for a lull in the heavy downpour of rain. In the little square, sheltered by skeleton trees, the market was packing up. The stalls were being dismantled. The slimy ground was littered with rubbish. Opposite was a butcher’s shop, stained with blood from the carcasses. A fat, rosy-cheeked woman could be seen behind the cash counter. Children from a nearby school were being let out for their midday break. They scampered about, shrieking. Many of them were wearing shoes with wooden soles. A green-and-white bus went by…

The atmosphere was neither that of the metropolis, nor that of a small provincial town or village. Maigret stole a glance at the American, and their eyes met. Spencer Oats seemed to read his thoughts, because his mouth twitched in a faint smile. In the rain, his face appeared a little veiled, like the scene before them.

“We have dreary places like this at home as well,” he murmured.

The inquiries they had just completed at the town hall could have been entrusted to the most lowly inspector, or indeed to a policeman of the lowest rank. First of all, Maigret had wanted to find out how long Charles Dandurand had lived in his present apartment as a tenant of Juliette Boynet.

He had been there just fourteen years. Before that, he had occupied a furnished apartment on Rue Delambre, near Boulevard Montparnasse.

And the contractor Boynet, Juliette’s late husband, had died six months before Dandurand moved in.

The two men, sheltering in the porch of the building, were waiting for the rain to subside.

“Tell me, Monsieur Spencer, do you know why criminals prefer to have dealings with one of us rather than an examining magistrate?”

“I think I’m beginning to get an inkling…”

“I don’t deny that we play it rough at times. Less so than is generally supposed, but much more so than any Examining Magistrate or Public Prosecutor’s deputy…On the other hand, it is impossible to conduct a police inquiry without, to some extent, entering into the life of the accused…We visit him in his home…We become familiar with his house, his habits, his family, and his friends…This morning I drew a distinction between the murderer
before
and
after
…well then, you could say that all our efforts are directed toward getting to know the murderer as he was
before…
Once we hand him over to the Examining Magistrate, our work is done…All connection with his former life as an ordinary man is severed, usually forever…He is a criminal and nothing but a criminal, and is treated as such by the judiciary.”