Maigret in Montmartre (13 page)

Young Lapointe had just picked up the telephone, and the line seemed to be bad.

“Is that Nice?”

He nodded. Janvier wasn’t there. Maigret went back to his office and rang for the usher to bring in the old lady from Lisieux.

“I understand you have something to tell me?”

“I don’t know if it will interest you. I was thinking, as I went along. You know how it is. One remembers things, without meaning to. I should not like to be suspected of ill-natured gossiping.”

“Go on, please.”

“It is about Anne-Marie. I told you this morning that she left Lisieux five years ago and that her mother had made no attempt to find out what had become of her which, between you and me, is a disgraceful way for a mother to behave.”

He would just have to wait; it was no use trying to hurry her.

“There was a lot of talk, of course. Lisieux is a small town, and things always get around in the end. A woman in whom I have every confidence, and who goes once a week to Caen, where she is part owner of a shop, swore to me on her husband’s life that not long before Anne-Marie left home she met her at Caen, just going into a doctor’s house.”

She paused with a smug expression on her face, and seemed surprised when Maigret asked no question. Then she continued, with a sigh:

“Not just an ordinary doctor—she was going to see Dr Potut, the gynaecologist.”

“In other words, you suspect your niece of having left the town because she was pregnant?”

“That was the rumour, and people wondered who the father could be.”

“Did they find out?”

“Plenty of names were suggested. But I had my own idea, all along, and that’s why I came back to see you. It is my duty to help you discover the truth, is it not?”

She was beginning to feel that the police were not as inquisitive as people made out; for Maigret wasn’t helping her at all. Far from urging her to speak, he was listening as indifferently as an old father-confessor, dozing behind the latticed partition of his box.

She went on, as though making a most important disclosure:

“Anne-Marie’s throat was always weak. She used to get tonsilitis at least once every winter, and when her tonsils were removed it made no difference. That year, I remember, my sister-in-law had decided to take her to La Bourboule for treatment—that’s the great place for throat illnesses.”

Maigret remembered that Arlette’s voice had been slightly hoarse; he had put it down to drink, smoking, and sleepless nights.

“When she left Lisieux she can’t have been pregnant for more than three or four months, because it didn’t show. That’s the utmost it can have been, especially as she always wore very tight-fitting dresses. Well, that exactly fits in with her visit to La Bourboule! I am perfectly certain it was there that she met the man by whom she became pregnant, and she most likely went off to join him. If it had been a Lisieux man, he would either have arranged for an abortion or gone away with her.”

Maigret slowly lit his pipe. He was aching all over, as though from a long tramp; but it was disgust that caused it.

He was tempted to go and open the window, just as when Philippe had been there.

“You’re going back to Lisieux, I suppose?”

“Not today. I have friends in Paris and shall probably spend a few days with them. I will leave you their address.”

The friends lived near the Boulevard Pasteur. She had already written out the address, on the back of one of her visiting cards, and added the telephone number.

“Don’t hesitate to ring up if you need me.”

“Thank you.”

“I shall always be ready to help.”

“I am sure you will.”

He conducted her to the door, without a smile, closed it slowly behind her, stretched himself, and rubbed his head with both hands, groaning in a low voice:

“What a filthy lot!”

“May I come in, sir?”

It was Lapointe. He had a sheet of paper in his hand and looked much excited.

“Did you phone for beer?”

“The waiter from the Brasserie Dauphine has just come up with the tray.”

The beer had not yet been taken to Torrence in his retreat, and Maigret, seizing the glass, swallowed its cool, frothy contents in one long draught.

“Ring up and tell them to send round some more!”

L
apointe said, not without a faint touch of jealousy in his voice:

“I’m beginning by giving you ‘best regards from little Julien.’ I was told you’d understand.”

“Is he at Nice?”

“He was moved there from Limoges a few weeks ago.”

Julien was the son of an old Inspector who had worked with Maigret for a long time and gone to live on the Riviera when he retired. As luck would have it, Maigret had hardly seen the boy since the days when he used to give him rides on his knee.

“It was he who spoke to me on the telephone yesterday,” went on Lapointe, “and I’ve been in touch with him ever since. When he knew it was you who’d told me to ring up, and that it was really you he was to work for, he got tremendously excited and went all out at the job. He’s been spending hours in an attic at the police station, hunting through old records. It seems there are any number of parcels, full of reports on cases everybody’s completely forgotten. They’re thrown about in an awful mess, and the pile nearly reaches the ceiling.”

“Did he find the report on the Farnheim business?”

“He’s just been giving me the list of the witnesses who were questioned after the Count’s death. I’d asked him to make a special effort to find the names of the servants who were employed at The Oasis. Here they are:

‘
Antoinette Méjat, aged nineteen, housemaid
,

‘
Kosalie Moncoeur, aged forty-two, cook
,

‘
Maria Pinaco, aged twenty-three, kitchen-maid
,

‘
Angelino Luppin, aged thirty-eight, butler
.”

Maigret waited, standing by the window of his office, watching the snow, which was falling less thickly now. Lapointe continued, after a dramatic pause:

“‘
Oscar Bonvoisin, aged thirty-five, valet-chauffeur
.”

“An Oscar!” observed the Inspector. “I suppose nobody knows what’s become of all these people?”

“Well, Inspector Julien had an idea. It isn’t long since he came to Nice, and he’d been struck by the number of wealthy foreigners who come to spend a few months there, rent biggish houses, and do a lot of entertaining. It occurred to him that they must need servants at very short notice. And he found an employment bureau which specializes in staffing big houses.

“It’s kept by an old lady who’s been there for over twenty years. She doesn’t remember Count von Farnheim, or the Countess, or Oscar Bonvoisin: but not more than a year ago she found a job for Rosalie Moncoeur, the cook who’s one of her regulars, with some South Americans who have a villa at Nice and spend part of the year in Paris. I have their address—132 Avenue d’Iéna. The old lady thought they were in Paris now.”

“Anything known about the others?”

“Julien’s still following that up. Shall I go and see her, sir?”

Maigret almost agreed, to please Lapointe, who was burning with eagerness to question the Farnheim’s ex-cook. But he finally declared that he would go himself—chiefly, to be quite honest, because he wanted to get some fresh air, have another beer on his way, and escape from his office, where he felt stifled that morning.

“Meantime, you look through the registers and see if there’s anything under ‘Bonvoisin’. You’ll have to hunt through the police forms of the lodging-houses too. And ring up all the townhalls and police stations in Paris.”

“Very well, sir.”

Poor Lapointe! Maigret felt sorry for him, but not to the extent of giving up his outing.

Before he left, he looked into the little room where Torrence and Philippe were shut up together. Torrence had taken his coat off, but even so there were beads of sweat on his forehead. Philippe, perched on the edge of a chair, was as white as a sheet and appeared likely to faint at any moment.

Maigret had no need to ask any questions. He knew Torrence would never give up—that he would go on with the little game till night came—and right through the night if necessary.

Less than half an hour later, a taxi pulled up outside a solemn-looking building in the Avenue d’Iéna, and the Inspector walked into a marble-pillared hall, where he was greeted by a porter in a dark uniform.

He explained his identity, asked whether Rosalie Moncoeur was still working in the house, and was directed towards the back-stairs.

“It’s on the third floor.”

He had drunk two more beers on his way and got rid of his headache. The staircase was a narrow, spiral one, and he counted the floors in an undertone as he went up. He rang the bell at a brown-painted door. A stout, white-haired woman opened it and looked at him in astonishment.

“Madame Moncoeur?”

“What do you want with her?”

“To speak to her.”

“It’s me.”

She was busy at her stove, and a swarthy little girl was putting a delicious-smelling mixture through a sieve.

“I believe you worked at one time for Count and Countess von Farnheim?”

“Who are you?”

“I come from the Judicial Police.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you’re digging up that old story?”

“Not exactly. Did you know the Countess was dead?”

“It happens to everyone. No, I didn’t know.”

“It was in the papers this morning.”

“Do you suppose I read the papers? With fifteen or twenty people coming to dinner here almost every day?”

“She was murdered.”

“That’s funny.”

“Why does it strike you as funny?”

She had not asked him to sit down, and now went on with her work, talking to him as she might to a tradesman. She was obviously a woman of experience, not easily impressed.

“I don’t know what made me say that. Who killed her?”

“We don’t know yet, and that’s what I’m trying to find out. Did you keep on working for her after her husband’s death?”

“Only for a couple of weeks. We didn’t get on.”

“Why not?”

Rosalie looked to see how the kitchen-maid was managing, and then opened the oven to baste a fowl.

“Because it wasn’t the kind of work for me.”

“You mean it wasn’t a respectable house?”

“Put it that way if you like. I’m fond of my work, and I expect people to come to meals at the right time and in a state to know more or less what they’re eating. That’ll do, Irma. Take the hard-boiled eggs out of the refrigerator and separate the yolks from the whites.”

She opened a bottle of Madeira and poured a liberal quantity into a sauce which she was stirring slowly with a wooden spoon.

“You remember Oscar Bonvoisin?”

She looked at him then, as though on the point of saying:

“So that’s what you were getting at!”

But she remained silent.

“You heard what I asked?”

“I’m not deaf.”

“What kind of man was he?”

“A valet.”

As Maigret looked surprised at her tone, she added:

“I don’t like valets. They’re all bone-idle. Specially when they’re chauffeurs as well. They think they’re cock of the roost, and put on worse airs than the master and mistress.”

“Was Bonvoisin like that?”

“I don’t remember his surname. He was always called Oscar.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was a good-looking fellow, and knew it. At least, some women admire that sort. I don’t myself, and I let him know it.”

“He made love to you?”

“In his way.”

“Meaning?”

“Why are you asking me all this?”

“Because I need to know.”

“You think he may have killed the Countess?”

“It’s possible.”

Irma was more excited by this conversation than either of the participants—she was so thrilled at being almost mixed up in a real crime that she had quite forgotten what she was supposed to be doing.

“Well, Irma? What about mashing up those yolks?”

“Can you give me a description of him?”

“As he was in those days, yes. But I don’t know what he looks like now.”

At that moment Maigret saw a gleam in her eye, and he said quickly:

“Are you sure? You’ve never seen him since?”

“That’s just what I was wondering. I’m not sure. A few weeks ago I went to see my brother, who has a small café, and in the street I met a man I thought I knew. He looked hard at me, too, as though he was searching his memory. And then, suddenly, I had the impression he’d begun to walk very fast, turning away his face.”

“And you thought it was Oscar?”

“Not at the moment. Later on I had the vague idea, and now I’d almost swear it was him.”

“Where’s your brother’s café?”

“In the Rue Caulaincourt.”

“And it was in Montmartre that you met this man you thought you recognized?”

“Just at the corner of the Place Clichy.”

“Now try to tell me what kind of man he was.”

“I don’t like giving people away.”

“You’d rather let a murderer go free?”

“If he’s only killed the Countess he’s done no great harm.”

“If he’s killed her, he’s killed at least one other woman and there’s no reason to suppose that he’ll stop there.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh well, it’s his look-out, after all. He wasn’t tall. Rather on the small side. It made him so cross that he used to wear high heels, like a woman, to make himself look taller. I used to tease him about it, and he’d scowl at me without saying a word.”

“He wasn’t very talkative?”

“He was as close as any oyster—never said what he was doing or what he thought. He was very dark, with hair that grew thick down to a low forehead, and bushy black eyebrows. Some women thought his eyes had an irresistible expression. Not me. He’d stare at you, looking as pleased with himself as if he’d been the only man in the world, and you were just dirt.”

“Go on.”

Now that she was launched, she showed no hesitation. All the time she talked, she was bustling about the kitchen, which was full of delicious smells, juggling deftly, as it were, with pans and gadgets, and glancing every few minutes at the electric clock.