Maigret (11 page)

‘What I say to you is of no
consequence, since you are not a sworn police officer and there are no
witnesses.'

As if overcome by doubt, he glanced at
the corridor and even opened the door to his bedroom for a moment.

‘The thing you have not
understood, you see, is that they won't betray me, even if they want to,
because legally they are guiltier than I am! Eugène has killed. It's Louis
who supplied the gun and the key to the Floria. And do you know
what might happen if Eugène tried to be clever? Little Monsieur Colin, as you call
him, that half-deaf little runt with a stutter, has instructions to slip something
in his glass one night while they're playing
belote
. I promise you,
in this game, it's not as necessary as you might think to be capable of
slitting a chicken's throat.'

Maigret had gone over to the desk to
pick up his hat and his matches. His knees were trembling slightly. It was over. He
had achieved his goal. All he had to do was to get out. The inspector waiting
outside in the street had a summons in his pocket. At Quai des Orfèvres they were
waiting for news and were probably laying bets on the outcome.

Maigret had been there for two hours.
Eugène, in silk pyjamas, was perhaps having a late breakfast with Fernande. And
where on earth might Philippe's dear mother be?

There were footsteps on the stairs,
followed by a violent knocking on the apartment door. Cageot looked Maigret in the
eyes, then gazed at his revolver, which was still lying on the desk.

While he went to open the door, Maigret
put his hand on his gun pocket and stood stock-still in the middle of the room.

‘What's going on?'
came Eugène's voice from the hall.

The two men were instantly at the door
to the office. There were more footsteps behind them, those of Fernande, who stared
at Maigret in surprise.

‘What the—?' repeated
Eugène.

But already a car was pulling up outside
with a squeal of brakes.

Eugène ran to a
window.

‘I knew it!' he groaned.

The police, who had been watching
Fernande's place and had followed the couple, jumped out on to the
pavement.

Cageot didn't budge. His revolver
in his hand, he was thinking.

‘Why have you come
here?'

He was addressing Eugène, who was
talking at the same time.

‘I telephoned four times
and—'

Maigret had inched backwards so as to
have his back to the wall.

At that, Cageot glanced at the
telephone. Just then a shot rang out, the room was filled with the smell of burnt
gunpowder and a bluish cloud hung in the sunlight.

Maigret had fired. The bullet had hit
Cageot's hand, causing him to drop the revolver.

‘Don't move!' said
Maigret, who was still pointing his gun.

Cageot stood rooted to the spot. In his
mouth he still had a sugared almond, which made his left cheek bulge. He did not
dare move a muscle.

There were footsteps on the stairs.

‘Go and open the door,
Fernande,' commanded Maigret.

She sought Eugène with her eyes to know
whether she should obey, but her lover was staring stubbornly at the floor. So she
walked resignedly across the hall, undid the chain and unlocked the door.

Blood was dripping from Cageot's
hand, plopping on to the rug, where a brownish stain was spreading.

Suddenly, before
Maigret could do anything, Eugène made a dash for one of the windows, flung it open,
breaking a pane, and jumped out.

Screams rose up from the street. Eugène
had landed on the roof of a stationary car, leaped to the ground and started running
in the direction of Rue des Dames.

At that moment, two inspectors appeared
in the doorway.

‘What's going on?'
they asked Maigret.

‘Nothing. You are going to arrest
Cageot, against whom there is a summons. Have you got back-up downstairs?'

‘No.'

Fernande had no idea what was happening.
She stood gazing at the open window in a stupor.

‘Then he'll run for a long
time!'

As he spoke, Maigret picked up the round
of wood and slipped it into his pocket. He had the feeling that something was afoot
with Cageot, but it wasn't serious. Cageot had crumpled to the floor and
rolled on the rug, where he lay inert.

He had fainted, probably at the sight of
his blood splashing on to the rug, drop by drop.

‘Wait till he comes round. Call a
doctor if you must. The telephone is working now.'

Maigret shoved Fernande on to the
landing and made her go down the stairs ahead of him. A crowd had gathered in front
of the building. A beat sergeant was trying to fight his way through it.

Maigret elbowed his way out of the crush
and he and Fernande found themselves outside the charcuterie on the corner of the
street.

‘The love of
your life?' he asked.

Then he noticed that she was wearing a
new fur coat. He felt it.

‘Did he give it to you?'

‘Yes, this morning.'

‘By the way, do you know that
he's the one who killed Pepito?'

‘Oh!'

She hadn't batted an eyelid. He
smiled.

‘Did he tell you?'

She merely fluttered her eyelashes.

‘When?'

‘This morning.'

And she added, suddenly solemn, like a
woman in love who believes it's the real thing:

‘You won't get
him!'

And she was right. A month later, she
went to join Eugène in Istanbul, where he had opened a nightclub on the famous Grand
Rue de Pera.

As for Cageot, he was a book-keeper in
prison.

Madame Lauer wrote to her sister:

I'm sending you by express delivery six plum tree saplings like the
ones we have in the garden at La Tourelle, as you requested. I think
they'll take very well in the Loire. But you should tell your husband
that in my view he doesn't prune his fruit trees properly, he should
take off more branches.

Philippe is much better since he's been back home. He's a good
boy who barely ever goes out and loves doing crosswords in the
evening. But in the last few days, I've seen him
hanging around the Scheffers' house (the owners of the gasworks) and I
think there are wedding bells in the air.

Tell your husband too that last night they put on the play that we saw
together at the Palais-Royal. But it didn't go down as well as it did
in Paris …

Maigret came in wearing his waders and
holding three pike at arm's length.

‘But we're not going to eat
those, are we?' said his wife.

‘Of course not!'

He said that in such an odd tone of
voice that she raised her head to look at him. But no! He was already going into the
shed to put away his fishing rods and take off his boots.

‘If we had to eat everything we
killed!'

The words formed in his mind of their
own accord at the same time as a ridiculous image, that of an ashen, perplexed
Cageot confronted with the bodies of Pepito and Audiat. It did not even bring a
smile to his face.

‘What soup have you made?'
he shouted, sitting down on a crate.

‘Tomato.'

‘Good!'

And the rubber boots fell to the beaten
earth floor one after the other as he heaved a contented sigh.

The pipe that Detective Chief Inspector
Maigret lit on coming out of his door in the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir was even more
delicious than usual. The first fog of the season was as pleasant a surprise as the
first snow for children, especially when it was not that nasty yellowish fog you see
on certain winter days, but a misty, milky vapour with halos of light in it. The air
was fresh. The ends of your fingers and your nose tingled on a day like this, and
the soles of your shoes clicked smartly on the road.

Hands in the pockets of his large
velvet-collared overcoat, famous at Quai des Orfèvres and still smelling slightly of
mothballs, his bowler hat well down on his head, Maigret made his way to the Police
Judiciaire on foot, at his leisure, and was amused when a girl suddenly shot out of
the fog at a run and collided with his dark, solid form.

‘Oh, I'm sorry,
sir.'

And she set off just as fast to catch
her bus or Métro train.

It seemed as if all of Paris was
enjoying the fog that morning, just like Inspector Maigret, and only the tugboats on
the Seine hoarsely announced their uneasiness.

A memory was to stick in his mind for no
good reason: he had just crossed Place de la Bastille on his way to Boulevard
Henri-IV. He was passing a little bistro. The door opened, because it was the first
time this season that the chill in the air had made the cafés close their doors. In
passing, Maigret walked through a gust of aromatic air that was, to him, the
quintessence of the Parisian dawn: the smell of good white coffee, hot croissants
and just a touch of rum. He guessed that behind the steamed-up windows ten, fifteen
or twenty customers were sitting at the metal counter, enjoying their first meal of
the day before hurrying off to work.

At nine o'clock precisely, he
reached the vaulted entrance of the Police Judiciaire building and climbed the vast
and ever-dusty staircase at the same time as several colleagues. As he reached the
first floor he automatically glanced through the waiting-room windows and on
recognizing Cécile, sitting on one of the chairs upholstered in green velours, he
scowled.

Or rather, to be absolutely frank, he
adopted a deliberately curmudgeonly expression.

‘Hey, Maigret, there she
is!'

The speaker was Cassieux, head of the
Drug Squad, coming upstairs just after him. And the joke would go on, just as it
always did when Cécile visited the office.

Maigret tried to get past without being
seen. How long had she been there? She was capable of staying put for hours in the
same place, motionless, her hands folded on top of her bag, her ridiculous green hat
always tilted slightly sideways on her rather too carefully arranged hair.

Of course she spotted the inspector and
sprang to her feet. Her mouth opened. She was inaudible because of the glazed
partition, but she must be sighing, ‘At last!'

Shoulders hunched, Maigret hurried to
his office at the end of the corridor. The clerk came over to tell him …

‘I know, I know,' growled
Maigret. ‘I don't have time at the moment.'

Because of the fog, he had to switch on
the lamp with its green shade on his desk. He took off his overcoat, his hat, looked
at the stove, thinking that if it was as chilly as this tomorrow he would ask to
have it lit, and then, after rubbing his cold hands together, sat down heavily, with
a growl of contentment, and took the telephone off the hook.

‘Hello … is that the Vieux Normand
café? … Will you get me Monsieur Janvier, please? … Hello, is that you,
Janvier?'

Inspector Janvier would have been
sitting in that little café-restaurant in Rue Saint-Antoine Since seven in the
morning, keeping watch on the Hôtel des Arcades.

‘Any news?'

‘They're all back in the
nest, boss. The woman went out half an hour ago to buy bread, butter and a quarter
kilo of ground coffee. She's just back.'

‘Is Lucas in position?'

‘I saw him at the window when I
got here.'

‘Right, Jourdan will be along to
relieve you. Not too frozen, I hope?'

‘A bit chilly. Not too
bad.'

Maigret smiled, thinking of the change
in Sergeant Lucas, who had transformed himself into a disabled old man four days
ago. It was a case of keeping watch on the gang of Poles, five or six of them, who
were staying in a squalid room in the squalid Hôtel des Arcades. There was no
evidence against them, except that one of them, known as the Baron, had paid at the
tote on Longchamp racecourse with one of the banknotes stolen from the Vansittart
farm.

The members of the gang moved around
Paris with no obvious purpose, but they met in Rue de Birague, and the central
figure there was a young woman; the police hadn't yet worked out whose
mistress she was, or what exactly her role was in the gang.

At the window of an apartment opposite,
muffled up in scarves, Lucas was keeping watch on them from morning to evening in
his disguise.

Maigret rose to empty his pipe in the
coal scuttle. He chose another from the desk, where he kept quite a collection,
caught sight of the form that Cécile had filled in and was about to read what she
had written, but at that moment a bell rang in the corridor and went on ringing.

The briefing! He snatched up the files
he had ready and, along with all the other departmental heads, went to the office of
the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire. This little ritual took place every
morning. The superintendent had long white hair and a goatee beard like a
musketeer's. Everyone shook hands.

‘Did you see her?'

Maigret looked surprised.

‘Who?'

‘Cécile! Now if I was Madame
Maigret …'

Poor Cécile! And yet she was still
young. Maigret had seen her papers: barely twenty-eight years old. But it would be
difficult to look more like an old maid, to move less gracefully, no matter how hard
she tried to be pleasing. Those black dresses that she must make for herself from
bad paper patterns, that ridiculous green hat! It was impossible to perceive any
feminine allure under all that. Her face was too pale, and she had a slight squint
into the bargain.

‘She's cross-eyed'
claimed Inspector Cassieux.

He was exaggerating; she wasn't
exactly cross-eyed. It was just that her left eye didn't look in quite the
same direction as her right eye.

She would arrive at eight in the
morning, already resigned to her fate. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Maigret,
please.'

‘I don't know if he'll
be in this morning. You could see Inspector Berger, who …'

‘No, thank you. I'll
wait.'

And wait she did, all day, without
moving, without any sign of impatience, suddenly leaping up, as if she were a prey
to emotion, when the inspector came upstairs.

‘I tell you, old friend,
she's in love with you.'

The officers stayed on their feet. They
chatted about this and that at first, and then, almost imperceptibly, got down to
work.

‘How's the Pélican case
going, Cassieux? Any news?'

‘I've called in the manager
for ten o'clock. He'll have to talk.'

‘Go carefully, will you? He has a
parliamentary deputy protecting him, and I don't want a lot of fuss. What
about your Poles, Maigret?'

‘I'm still waiting.
I'm planning to investigate their hideout myself tonight. If there's
nothing new tomorrow I'll try to have a heart-to-heart with the
woman.'

A nasty bunch. Three crimes committed
within six months, all at isolated farms in the north of the country. Coarse, brutal
banditry, axe murders …

The fog was turning golden. Electric
light wasn't necessary now. The commissioner of the Police Judiciare drew a
file towards him. ‘If you have a moment this morning, Maigret … here's
some research into family interests. A young man of nineteen, the son of a large
industrialist, who …'

‘Let me have a look.'

The briefing went on for half an hour,
while the air in the room was filled with pipe and cigarette smoke, and was
interrupted from time to time by phone calls.

‘Yes, sir … certainly,
minister.'

And there was a constant racket of
police officers coming and going in the huge corridor, doors opening and closing,
telephone conversations in the offices.

Maigret, his file under his arm, went
back to his own office. He was thinking of the gang of Poles. Automatically, he put
the file down on the form that Cécile had filled in. Almost as soon as he was
sitting down, the clerk knocked on his door.

‘It's about that girl
…'

‘Yes?'

‘Are you going to see
her?'

‘In a little while.'

First he wanted to finish dealing with
the case that the boss had handed him. He knew where to find the young man
concerned; he had already had dealings with him.

‘Hello … get me the Hôtel
Myosotis, Rue Blanche.'

It was a shabby hotel, where the young
man and others like him met, took cocaine and made no secret of their habit.

‘Hello? Listen to me, Francis, I
think you're finally going to have to close that place of yours … What? Well,
that's just too bad … You're going too far. If you want some good
advice, send me young Duchemin right away. Or even better, bring him here yourself.
I have a couple of things to say to him … Of course. He's with you … And if he
isn't I'm sure you'll manage to unearth him for me before midday …
Yes, I'm counting on it.'

Someone was already calling him on
another phone. An embarrassed examining magistrate.

‘Is that Detective Chief Inspector
Maigret? It's about Pénicaid, inspector. He claims that you intimidated him
into confessing, he says you got him to undress in your office and then left him
there for five hours completely naked …'

And there were still orders to be given
to the junior inspectors waiting in the next-door office, hats tipped over their
ears, cigarettes in their mouths. It was eleven before he remembered Cécile, and he
pressed the electric bell.

‘Ask the girl to come
in.'

The clerk returned alone a few moments
later. ‘She's left, inspector.'

‘Oh.'

First he shrugged his shoulders. Then,
sitting down again, he frowned. This wasn't like Cécile, who had once spent
seven hours in the waiting room without moving. He looked for her form among the
papers littering his desk, and finally found it under young Duchemin's
file.

You simply must see me. A terrible
thing happened last night.

CÉCILE PARDON

The clerk came back when he rang
again.

‘Listen, Léopold,' (the
man's name wasn't Léopold, but his resemblance to the former king of the
Belgians had earned him that nickname) ‘when did she leave?'

‘I don't know, sir.
I've been called into all the offices. Half an hour ago she was still
there.'

‘Were there many people in the
waiting room?'

‘Two to see the chief. A
middle-aged man wanting to know about our legal warrants. And then … well, you know
how it is in the morning, all that coming and going. I can only tell you that the
young lady wasn't there.'

Maigret felt a small and unpleasant
sensation, a niggling anxiety, in his chest. He didn't like it. They had made
too much fun of poor Cécile.

‘If she should come back, you
…'

No. He changed his mind and called one
of his inspectors.

‘The proprietor of the Hôtel
Myosotis will be here in a few minutes' time with a young man called Duchemin.
Get them to wait. If I'm not back by midday, keep the young man here and send
the hotelier back to his own business.'

Once at Pont Saint-Michel, he almost
hailed a taxi, which could be a sign. Just because it could be a sign he
didn't do it and waited for a tram. He didn't want to ascribe too much
importance to Cécile, which would be tantamount to admitting that …

The fog, instead of lifting, had come
down more densely, although it wasn't so cold. Maigret smoked his pipe on the
platform of the tram, with his head bobbing to the jerky movements and the
intermittent braking of the tram.

When had Cécile first visited the Police
Judiciaire? About six months ago. He had left his notebook on his desk, but he could
check when he got back. She had asked immediately for Detective Chief Inspector
Maigret. True, she could have seen his name in the newspapers. She was calm. Did she
realize that the story she told sounded like the work of an over-fertile
imagination?

She was trying to speak with composure,
looking the inspector straight in the face, and she corrected the more extravagant
passages of her story with a smile.

‘I assure you, inspector,
I'm not making anything up, and I'm not gullible either. I know where
everything in the room ought to stand, since I do the housework myself. My aunt
would never have a maid. The first time it happened I might have thought I was
mistaken. But after that I paid careful attention. And yesterday I looked for
certain marks. I've gone further than that. I stretched a thread across the
front doorway … and not only had two chairs changed places, my thread was broken. So
someone has been in our apartment. Someone has spent a certain amount of time in the
sitting room, and in particular opened my aunt's desk, because I left a clue
there as well. That's the third time in two months. These days my aunt can do
almost nothing, no one has the key to the apartment, yet the lock hadn't been
forced. I didn't want to talk to Aunt Juliette about it for fear of worrying
her. However, I'm certain that nothing has gone. She'd have told me if
it had, because she has a very suspicious nature.'