Maigret (12 page)

‘So the fact is,' Maigret
had summed up, ‘you are saying that for the third time in two months some
unknown person entered the apartment where you and your aunt live, that this person
spent time in the sitting room and changed the position of the chairs …'

‘And the blotting pad too,'
she pointed out.

‘Changed the position of the
chairs and the blotting pad and searched your aunt's desk, which was locked
but shows no signs of being forced …'

‘And I should add that someone was
smoking there that evening,' she persisted. ‘My aunt doesn't
smoke, nor do I, and no man called to see us yesterday. But the sitting room smelled
of tobacco this morning.'

‘I'll come and look
…'

‘Oh, that's what I'd
like to avoid. My aunt isn't easy to deal with. She'd be cross with me,
especially as I didn't tell her about it …'

‘Then what do you expect the
police to do?'

‘I don't know … I trust you
… maybe if you were to spend a few nights on the staircase outside …?'

Poor thing, imagining that a detective
chief inspector of police had nothing better to do than spend the night in a
stairway to check up on a girl's stories!

‘I'll send you Lucas
tonight.'

‘You won't come
yourself?'

No, for heaven's sake no! She was
going too far. And her resentment – here Maigret's colleagues were right – was
like that of a woman in love.

‘You see, it might not be tonight.
It could be in three, five, maybe ten days. How do I know? I'm afraid,
inspector. The idea of a man …'

‘Where do you live?'

‘In Bourg-la-Reine, a kilometre
from Porte d'Orléans, on the main road … just opposite the fifth tram stop.
It's a big five-storey apartment building, brick, and there's a bicycle
shop and a grocer's on the ground floor. We live on the fifth
floor.'

Lucas had gone there and had asked the
neighbours questions. When he came back he was sceptical.

‘An old lady who hasn't been
out of the place for months, and her niece who acts as her maidservant and looks
after her in general.'

The local police were asked to keep an
eye on the building, which was under surveillance for almost a month. No one ever
saw anyone but the tenants going in and out of it by night.

And yet Cécile kept returning to Quai
des Orfèvres.

‘He's been back again,
inspector. This time he left ink marks on the blotter. I'd changed the
blotting paper yesterday evening.'

‘And he didn't take anything
away?'

‘No, nothing.'

Maigret had been imprudent enough to
tell the story to his colleagues, and the whole of Quai des Orfèvres was greatly
amused.

‘Maigret has made a
conquest.'

They went to take a look at the young
lady with the squint through the glazed partition of the waiting room and then
visited Maigret's office.

‘Quick – there's someone to
see you!'

‘Who is it?'

‘Your love-sick
admirer.'

Lucas had spent eight nights running
lying in wait in the stairwell of the building and had neither seen nor heard
anything.

‘It could be tomorrow,'
Cécile said.

It was left at that.

‘Cécile is here …'

Cécile was famous. Everyone called her
Cécile. If a junior officer wanted to see Maigret, he was told, ‘Careful.
There's someone in there.'

‘Who is it?'

‘Cécile.'

Maigret changed to another tram at Porte
d'Orléans and got off at the fifth stop. A building rose on the right, by
itself, alone between two tracts of waste land; you might have thought you were on a
thin slice of road, cut from a block of Neapolitan ice cream.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Cars were
driving towards Arpajon and Orléans. Trucks were coming back from Les Halles. The
door of the apartment building was wedged between the bicycle shop and the grocery.
The concierge was peeling carrots.

‘Has Mademoiselle Pardon come home
yet?'

‘Mademoiselle Cécile? I
don't think so. You can always ring the bell, and Madame Boynet will open the
door.'

‘I thought she was
disabled.'

‘Almost, but she's had a
system rigged up so that she can open the door from her armchair, like in my lodge
here. That's to say, if she wants to.'

Five floors. Maigret hated stairs. These
were dark, and the stairwell was covered with wallpaper the colour of tobacco juice.
The walls were well seasoned; the smell changed from landing to landing, depending
on what people were cooking. So did the noises. Piano music, children yowling, and
somewhere the echoes of a heated argument.

There was a dusty business card, saying
‘Jean Siveschi', under the electric bell on the left-hand door on the
fifth floor, so it must be the door on the right that he wanted. He rang the bell
there. The sound passed from room to room, but there was no click, and the door did
not open. He rang again. His uneasiness was turning to anxiety and his anxiety to
remorse.

‘What is it?' asked a
woman's voice behind him.

He turned and saw a plump young woman
whose blue dressing-gown made her look even more alluring.

‘Madame Boynet …'

‘I'm sure she's
in,' the young woman replied with a slight foreign accent. ‘Hasn't
anyone answered the door? That's odd …'

She rang the bell herself, revealing a
little flesh as she raised her arm to reach the cord that worked it.

‘Even if Cécile is out, her aunt
should …'

Maigret stood around on the landing for
ten minutes and then had to walk nearly a kilometre to find a locksmith. Not only
did the young woman come running again at the sound of the bell, so did her mother
and her sister.

‘Do you think there's been
an accident?'

It proved possible to open the door
without forcing the lock, which showed no traces of violence. Maigret was the first
to enter the apartment. It was crowded with old furniture and knick-knacks; he
didn't notice the details. A sitting room. A dining room. An open door, and on
a mahogany bedstead an old lady with tinted hair who …

‘Please go away, do you
hear?' he called, turning to the three neighbours. ‘If you find this
kind of thing entertaining, I can only say I'm sorry for you.'

A strange corpse: a plump little old
woman, heavily made up, her hair light blonde, over-bleached – you could see white
at the roots – wearing a red dressing-gown and a stocking, just one stocking on the
leg which was dangling over the edge of the bed.

There could be no possible doubt about
it; she had been strangled.

He went out on the landing again and,
his voice harsh and anxious, said, ‘Someone find me a local police
officer.'

Five minutes later, he was phoning from
the glazed telephone booth of a nearby bistro.

‘Hello? Detective Chief Inspector
Maigret, yes … Who's this on the phone? All right … Tell me, young man, has
Cécile come back? … Then go to the public prosecutor's office … Try to see the
public prosecutor himself … Tell him … Are you listening?. … No, I'm staying
here. Hello! And tell Criminal Records … If by some miracle Cécile does turn up
there … What was that? No, young man, this is no time for silly jokes …'

When he left the bistro, after drinking
a quick glass of rum at the bar, fifty people were stationed outside the apartment
building in a formation like a rectangular block of ice cream.

In spite of himself, he looked around
for Cécile.

Not until five in the afternoon was he
to learn that Cécile was dead.