Maigret in Montmartre (7 page)

“Thank you, Madame—?”

“Aubain.”

“Thank you, Madame Aubain. You may go back to your lodge now. I can hear someone coming upstairs, and I expect it’s the doctor.”

It was not Dr Bloch as yet, but the medical examiner—the same one who had examined Arlette’s body that morning.

As he came through into the bedroom, after shaking hands with Maigret and nodding in a vaguely gracious manner to Lognon, he gave an involuntary exclamation:

“What—again!”

The Countess’s bruised throat showed clearly how she had been killed. And the blue specks on her thighs showed equally clearly that she was hopelessly addicted to drugs. He sniffed one of the syringes and said with a shrug:

“Morphia, of course!”

“Did you know her?”

“Never set eyes on her before. But I know a good few of her sort, in this district. I say—looks as though theft had been the motive, doesn’t it?”

He pointed to the slit in the mattress, where the horsehair was hanging out.

“Was she well off?”

“We don’t know yet,” replied Maigret.

Janvier, who for some minutes had been picking at the lock of a drawer with his penknife, announced at this point:

“This drawer’s full of papers.”

Someone with a young, light step came quickly upstairs and into the room. It was Dr Bloch.

Maigret noticed that the medical examiner greeted the newcomer with no more than a curt nod, pointedly refraining from extending his hand, as he normally would do to a colleague.

D
r Bloch’s skin was too sallow, his eyes too bright, his hair black and oily. He had apparently not paused on his way to listen to the gossipers in the street or to speak to the concierge. Janvier, on the telephone, had not told him the Countess had been murdered—only that she was dead and that the Inspector wanted to speak to him.

He had rushed upstairs, four steps at a time, and now stood looking uneasily about him. Possibly he had given himself an injection before leaving his surgery. He did not seem surprised at being snubbed by the other doctor, and made no protest. His manner suggested that he was expecting trouble.

Yet the moment he stepped into the bedroom, he showed relief. The Countess had been strangled, so her death was nothing to do with him.

In less than half a minute he had recovered his self-assurance and was even inclined to be bad-tempered and insolent.

“Why did you send for me rather than for some other doctor?” he began, as though feeling his way.

“Because the concierge told us this woman was your patient.”

“I only saw her a few times.”

“What illness were you treating her for?”

Bloch turned towards the other doctor, as though to indicate that he must know perfectly well.

“You’ve surely realized that she was a drug addict? When she’d overdone it she’d have a fit of depression—it’s frequent with such cases—work herself into a panic, and send for me. She was terrified of dying.”

“Have you known her long?”

“It’s only three years since I took over this practice.”

He could hardly be more than thirty years old. Maigret would have been ready to bet that he was a bachelor and had become addicted to morphia as soon as he set up in practice—perhaps even before he qualified. He must have had his reasons for settling in Montmartre, and it was easy to guess what type of patients he attracted.

He wouldn’t last long, that was obvious. His goose was cooked already.

“What do you know about her?”

“Her name and address, which are on my register. And the fact that she’d been taking drugs for fifteen years.”

“How old was she?”

“Forty-eight or forty-nine.”

Looking at the emaciated body on the bed, at the thin, colourless hair on the head, it was difficult to believe that she had been no older.

“Isn’t it rather unusual for a morphia addict to drink to excess as well?”

“It happens sometimes.”

The doctor’s hands were slightly shaky, as a drunkard’s are apt to be in the morning, and one side of his mouth twitched every now and then.

“I suppose you tried to cure her?”

“At first, yes. It was a pretty hopeless case. I made no headway. She would let weeks go by without sending for me.”

“Didn’t she ever send for you because she’d run out of the stuff and had to get hold of some at all costs?”

Bloch glanced at the other doctor. No use lying about it the answer was written, as it were, on the body and all over the flat.

“There’s no need, I imagine, for me to give you a lecture on the subject. An addict who has got beyond a certain point simply cannot, without serious danger, be cut off from the drug. I don’t know where she obtained her supply. I never asked her. Twice, so far as I can remember, I arrived here to find her almost crazy because it hadn’t turned up and, I gave her an injection.”

“Did she ever tell you anything about her past life—her family, her background?”

“All I know is that she really was married to a certain Count von Farnheim—I understand he was an Austrian and a great deal older than she. They lived together in a big house on the Riviera; she mentioned that once or twice.”

“One more question, doctor: did she pay you by cheque?”

“No—in cash.”

“And you know nothing about her friends, her relations, or her sources of supply?”

“Nothing whatever.”

Maigret let it go at that.

“Thank you,” he said, “that is all.”

Once again he felt disinclined to wait until the technical people arrived, and still more reluctant to answer the questions of the journalists who would soon be thronging in: he wanted to escape from this stifling, depressing atmosphere.

He gave some instructions to Janvier and went off in a taxi to the Quai des Orfèvres, where he found a message asking him to ring up Dr Paul, the official pathologist.

“I’m just writing my report, which will be with you tomorrow morning,” said the doctor—all unaware that he would have another post-mortem to carry out before his day’s work was over. “But I thought I’d better tell you right away about two points that may have a bearing on your inquiries. The first is that in all probability the girl wasn’t as old as her record makes out. She’s supposed to be twenty-four, but according to the medical evidence she can’t be a day over twenty.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Practically certain. And the second point is that she’d had a child. That’s all I can say. And the person who killed her must have been very strong.”

“Could it have been a woman?”

“I don’t think so. If it was, she must have had the strength of a man.”

“Haven’t you heard about the second crime yet? You’ll be wanted any moment in the Rue Victor-Massé.”

Dr Paul grumbled something about a dinner engagement, and the two men rang off.

The early editions of the evening papers had printed Arlette’s photograph, and as usual several telephone calls had been received. Two or three people were waiting in the anteroom. An inspector was attending to them, and Maigret went home to dinner. His wife, having seen the newspapers, was not expecting him.

It was still raining. He was wet, and went to change his clothes.

“Are you going out again?”

“I shall probably be out for part of the night.”

“Have they found the Countess?”

(The papers had said nothing as yet about the murder in the Rue Victor-Massé).

“Yes. Strangled.”

“Well, don’t catch cold. According to the wireless, it’s going to freeze and there’ll probably be ice on the roads to-morrow morning.”

He took a small glass of brandy before leaving, and went on foot as far as the Place de la République, to get a breath of fresh air.

His first idea had been to let young Lapointe deal with Arlette’s case; but on second thoughts he felt that would be cruel in the circumstances, and decided to leave it to Janvier.

Janvier would be hard at it now. Armed with a photo of Arlette, he would be making the round of all the cheap hotels and lodging-houses in Montmartre, with special attention to the small places that let rooms by the hour.

Fred, of Picratt’s, had hinted that Arlette, like the other women, sometimes went off with a client at closing time. The concierge of her house had been positive that she never brought anyone home with her. But it was unlikely that she went far. And if she had a permanent lover, perhaps she met him at some hotel.

Maigret had told Janvier to take the opportunity of inquiring about a man called Oscar, about whom the police had no information and whose name the girl had only mentioned once. Why had she—apparently—regretted her mention of him and lapsed into silence afterwards?

Being shorthanded, Maigret had left Inspector Lognon in the Rue Victor-Massé, where the photographers would have finished their work by now; probably the body had been removed while he was at dinner.

When he reached the Quai des Orfèvres, the lights were out in most of the offices. Young Lapointe was in the Inspector’s room, going through the papers found in the Countess’s drawer, which he had been told to examine.

“Found anything, my boy?”

“I haven’t finished yet. All this stuff is in confusion and it’s difficult to sort it out. Besides, I’m checking everything as I go along. I’ve made several phone calls already, and I’m expecting several others—including one from the flying squad at Nice.”

He held up a postcard photograph of a big, opulent-looking place overlooking the Baie des Anges. The house was built in the worst sham-oriental style, complete with minaret, and the name, The Oasis, was printed in one corner of the card.

“According to these papers, she was living here with her husband fifteen years ago.”

“She’d have been under thirty-five then.”

“Here’s a photo of the two of them, taken at that time.”

It was an amateur snapshot, showing the couple standing at the front door of the villa; the woman had two huge borzois on a leash.

Count von Farnheim was a small, dried-up man with a little white beard; he was well-dressed and wore a monocle. The woman was buxom and good-looking—the type that men would turn to stare at.

“Do you know where the marriage took place?”

“At Capri, three years before this photo was taken.”

“How old was the Count?”

“Sixty-five at the time of the marriage. It only lasted three years. He bought The Oasis as soon as they got back from Italy.”

The papers were a jumble of bills, yellow with age, much-stamped passports, cards of admittance to the casinos at Nice and Cannes, and even a bundle of letters. Lapointe had not had time to look at these; they were written in an angular, rather Germanic script, and signed ‘Hans’.

“Do you know what her maiden name was?”

“Madeleine Lalande. She was born at La Roche-sur-Yon, Vendée, and at one time she was in the chorus at the Casino de Paris.”

Lapointe seemed to look upon his present job as almost a penance.

“Nothing’s turned up, I suppose?” he inquired after a pause. He was obviously thinking of Arlette.

“Janvier’s seeing to it. I shall be taking a hand too.”

“Are you going to Picratt’s?”

Maigret nodded, and walked away to his office next door, where he found the inspector who was dealing with telephone calls and visitors who claimed to identify Arlette.

“Nothing reliable so far. One old woman seemed so sure of herself that I took her to the mortuary. Even when she was faced with the body she swore it was her daughter. But the chap on duty put me wise. She’s cracked. She’s been claiming to recognize every woman who’s been brought in there for the last ten years or more.”

The weather forecast must have been right for once, because when Maigret left the office it was colder, as cold as winter, and he turned up the collar of his overcoat. He reached Montmartre too early: it was only just after eleven, and the night life had not begun—people were still packed together in theatres and cinemas, the neon lights of the cabarets were being turned on one by one, and the uniformed doormen were not yet at their posts.

Maigret went first of all to the
tabac
at the corner of the Rue de Douai, where he had been scores of times and was recognized. The proprietor had only just come in, for he too was a night bird. In the day-time his wife ran the bar, with a team of waiters, and he took over from her in the late evening, so they only met in passing.

“What will you have, Inspector?”

Maigret had already caught sight of a figure to which the proprietor, with a sidelong glance, now seemed to be directing his attention. It could only be the Grasshopper. His head scarcely topped the bar at which he was standing, drinking a
menthe à l’eau
. He, for his part, had recognized Maigret, but was pretending to be absorbed in his racing paper, on which he was making pencil notes.

He might easily have been taken for a jockey—he was just the right size. It was uncanny to discover, on looking closely, that with his childish body went a wrinkled, grey-skinned face with sharp, darting eyes which seemed to take in everything, like the eyes of some restless animal.

He was not in uniform, but wore a dark suit which gave him the appearance of a small boy in his first long trousers.

“Was it you who were here this morning, about four o’clock?” Maigret asked the proprietor, after ordering a glass of
calvados
.

“Yes, as usual. I saw her. I know what’s happened—it was in the evening paper.”

These people would make no difficulties. A few musicians were there, taking a
café—crème
before going off to their work. And there were two or three shady characters whom Maigret knew and who put on innocent expressions.

“What was she like?”

“Same as she always was at that time of night.”

“Did she come every night?”

“No, only now and then. When she thought she hadn’t had enough. She’d drink a glass or two of something strong and then go off to bed—she never stayed long.”

“Not even last night?”

“She seemed rather on edge, but she said nothing to me. I don’t think she spoke to anyone, except to give her order.”