The Dancer at the Gai-Moulin (18 page)

A radiant late afternoon. The
sunshine almost as thick as syrup in the quiet streets of the Left Bank. And
everything – the people's faces, the countless familiar sounds of the
street – exuded a joy to be alive.

There are days like this, when
ordinary life seems heightened, when the people walking down the street, the
trams and cars all seem to exist in a fairy tale.

It was 27 June. When Maigret arrived
at the gate of the Santé prison he found the guard gazing soppily at a little
white cat that was playing with the dog from the dairy.

Some days the pavement must be more
resonant underfoot: Maigret's footsteps echoed in the vast courtyard. He
walked to the end of a corridor, where he asked a warder:

‘Does he
know? …'

‘Not yet.'

A key turned in the lock. The bolt
was pulled back. A high-ceilinged cell, very clean. A man stood up, looking
unsure as to which expression to adopt.

‘All right, Lenoir?' the
inspector asked.

The man nearly smiled. But a thought
came into his mind and his face hardened. He frowned suspiciously, and his mouth
twisted into a sneer for a moment or two. Then he shrugged his shoulders and
held out his hand.

‘I see,' he said.

‘What do
you see?'

A resigned smile.

‘Give it a rest, eh? You must
be here because …'

‘I'm here because
I'm off on holiday tomorrow and …'

The prisoner gave a hollow laugh. He
was a tall young man. His dark hair was brushed back. He had regular features,
fine brown eyes. His thin dark moustache set off the whiteness of his teeth,
which were as sharp as a rodent's.

‘That's very kind of
you, inspector …'

He stretched, yawned, put down the
lid of the toilet in the corner of the cell which had been left up.

‘Excuse the
mess …'

Then suddenly, looking Maigret in
the eye, he said:

‘They've turned down the
appeal, haven't they?'

There was no point in lying. He knew
already. He started pacing up and down.

‘I knew they
would … so when is it? … Tomorrow?'

Even so, his voice faltered and his
eyes drank in the glimmer of light from the narrow window high up the cell
wall.

At that moment, the evening papers
being sold on the café terraces announced:

The President of the Republic
has rejected the appeal of Jean Lenoir, the young leader of the Belleville
gang. The execution will take place tomorrow at dawn.

It was Maigret himself who had
arrested Lenoir three months previously, in a hotel in Rue Saint-Antoine. A
split second later and the bullet the
gangster fired at him would have caught him full in the chest rather than ending
up lodged in the ceiling.

In spite of this, the inspector bore
him no grudge; indeed, he had taken something of a shine to him. Firstly,
perhaps, because Lenoir was so young – a twenty-two-year-old who had been in and
out of prison since the age of fifteen. But also because he had a
self-confidence about him.

He had had accomplices. Two of them
were arrested at the same time as him. They were both guilty and on this
occasion – an armed robbery – they probably played a bigger part than the boss
himself. However, Lenoir got them off the hook. He took the whole blame on
himself and refused to ‘spill the beans'.

He never put on an act, wasn't
too full of himself. He didn't blame society for his actions.

‘Looks like I've
lost,' was all he said.

It was all over. More precisely, it
would be all over when the sun, which was casting a golden strip of light on the
cell wall, next rose.

Almost unconsciously, Lenoir felt
the back of his neck. He shivered, turned pale, gave a derisive laugh:

‘It feels
weird …'

Then suddenly, in an outburst of
bitterness:

‘There are others who deserve
this, and I wish they were going down with me!'

He looked at Maigret, hesitated,
walked round the narrow cell once more, muttering:

‘Don't get excited,
I'm not going to put anyone in the frame now … but all the
same …'

The inspector
avoided looking at him. He could feel a confession coming. And he knew the man
was so prickly that the slightest reaction or sign of interest on his part would
make him clam up.

‘There's a little place
known as the “Two-Penny Bar” … I don't suppose
you're familiar with it, but if you happen to find yourself in the
neighbourhood you might be interested to know that one of the regulars there has
more reason than me to be putting his head on the block
tomorrow …'

He was still pacing up and down. He
couldn't stay still. It was hypnotic. It was the only sign of his inner
turmoil.

‘But you won't get
him … Look, without giving anything away, I can tell you this
much … I don't know why this is coming back to me now. Maybe
because I was just a kid. I couldn't have been more than
sixteen … Me and my friend used to do a bit of filching around the
dance halls. He must be in a sanatorium by now – he already had a cough back
then …'

Was all this talk just to give
himself the illusion of being alive, to prove to himself that he was still a
man?

‘One night – it must have been
around three in the morning – we were walking down the street. It doesn't
matter which street. Just a street. We saw a door opening ahead of us. There was
a car parked by the roadside. This guy came out, pushing another guy in front of
him. No, not pushing. Imagine you're carrying a shop dummy and trying to
make it look like it's your friend walking next to you. He put him in the
car and got into the
driver's
seat. My friend shot me a look and we both jumped up on to the rear bumper. In
those days they called me the Cat … that tells you all you need to
know! The guy drove all over the place. He seemed to be looking for something,
but seemed to keep losing his way. In the end we realized what he'd been
looking for, because we arrived at the Canal Saint-Martin. You've worked
it out, haven't you? It was over in the time it takes to open and shut a
car door. One body at the bottom of the canal …

‘Smooth as you like! The guy
in the car must have put lead weights in the stiff's pockets, because he
sank like a stone.

‘We kept our cool. Another
wink and we're back on the bumper. Then it was just a case of checking the
client's address. He stopped in the Place de la République to have a glass
of rum at the only café that was open. Then he drove his car to the garage and
went home. We could see his silhouette through the curtains as he got
undressed …

‘We blackmailed him for two
years, Victor and me. We were novices. We were afraid of asking for too
much … a few hundred at a time …

‘Then one day he moved house,
and we lost him … Then three months ago I ran into him again at the
Two-Penny Bar. He didn't even recognize me …'

Lenoir spat on the ground,
automatically searched his pockets for his cigarettes.

‘You'd think
they'd let me smoke, in my situation,' he muttered.

The shaft of
sunlight above their heads had disappeared. Footsteps could be heard out in the
corridor.

‘It's not that I'm
making out that I'm better than I am, but this guy I'm telling you
about should be up there with me, tomorrow, on the …'

Suddenly the beads of sweat stood
out on his forehead, and his legs buckled. He sat down on the edge of his
bunk.

‘Leave me …' he
sighed. ‘No, don't … don't leave me alone
today … It's better to talk to someone … Hey, do you
want me to tell you about Marcelle, the woman who …'

The door opened. The
prisoner's lawyer hesitated when he saw Maigret. He had pasted on his
professional smile, so that his client wouldn't be able to guess that his
appeal had been turned down.

‘I have good
news …' he began.

‘I know!'

Then, to Maigret:

‘Guess I won't be seeing
you, inspector … Well, we've all got a job to do. By the way, I
wouldn't bother checking out the Two-Penny Bar. This guy is just as
cunning as you …'

Maigret offered his hand. He saw his
nostrils twitch, his dark moustache moisten with sweat, the two front teeth
biting the lower lip.

‘Better this than
typhoid!' Lenoir joked, with a forced laugh.

Maigret didn't go away on
holiday; there was a case involving forged bonds that took up nearly all of his
time.
He had never heard of the
Two-Penny Bar. He asked around among his colleagues.

‘Don't know it.
Whereabouts? On the Marne? The lower Seine?'

Lenoir was sixteen at the time of
the events he had described. So the case was six years old, and one evening
Maigret read the reports for that year.

There was nothing sensational.
Missing persons, as always. A woman chopped up into pieces, whose head was never
found. As for the Canal Saint-Martin, it had thrown up no less than seven
corpses.

The forged bonds turned out to be a
complicated case, involving many lines of inquiry. Then he had to drive Madame
Maigret to her sister's in Alsace, where she stayed for a month every
year.

Paris was emptying. The asphalt grew
sticky underfoot. Pedestrians sought the shady side of the street, and the café
terraces were full.

Expecting you Sunday without
fail. Love from everyone.

Madame Maigret's summons
arrived when her husband had failed to turn up for a fortnight. It was Saturday,
23 July. He tidied up his desk and warned Jean, the office boy at the Quai des
Orfèvres, that he probably wouldn't be back before Monday evening.

As he was about to leave, he noticed
the brim of his bowler, which had been torn for weeks. His wife had told him a
dozen times to buy a new one.

‘You'll have people
throwing you coins in the street …'

He spotted a
hatshop in Boulevard Saint-Michel. He tried on a few, but they were all too
small for his head.

‘I'm sure this one will
be just right …' the spotty young shop assistant kept insisting.

Maigret was never more miserable
than when he was trying things on in shops. In the mirror he was looking in, he
spotted a man's back and head, and on the head a top hat. As the man was
dressed in hunting tweeds, he cut a rather droll figure.

‘No! I wanted something a bit
older-looking,' he was saying. ‘It's not meant to be
smart.'

Maigret was waiting for the
assistant to return from the back of the shop with some new hats for him to try
on.

‘It's just for a little
play-acting … a mock marriage which we're putting on with a few
friends at the Two-Penny Bar … there'll be a bride, mother of
the bride, page-boys, the lot! … Just like a village
wedding! … Now do you see what I'm after? … I'm
playing the part of the village mayor …'

The customer gave a hearty laugh. He
was about thirty-five, thickset, with rosy cheeks; he had the air of a
prosperous businessman.

‘Maybe one with a flat
brim …'

‘Hold on! I think we've
got just the thing you're after in the workshop. It was a cancelled
order …'

Maigret was brought another pile of
bowlers. The first one he tried on fitted. But he dallied and made sure he left
the shop just before the man with the opera hat. He hailed a taxi, just in case
he needed it.

He did. The man came out of the
shop, got into a car
parked next to the
pavement and drove off in the direction of Rue Vieille-du-Temple.

There he spent half an hour in a
second-hand shop and emerged with a flat cardboard box, which obviously
contained a suit to go with his top hat.

Then on to the Champs-Élysées,
Avenue de Wagram. A small bar on a street corner. He stayed there only five
minutes and left accompanied by a buxom, jovial-looking woman who must have been
in her thirties.

Twice Maigret looked at his watch.
His first train had already gone. The second would be leaving in a quarter of an
hour. He shrugged his shoulders and told the taxi driver:

‘Keep following
him.'

Much as he had expected, the car
drew up in front of an apartment block on Avenue Niel. The couple hurried in
through the entrance. Maigret waited a quarter of an hour, then went in, taking
note of the brass plate:

Bachelor apartments by the
month or by the day.

In a smart office which had a whiff
of adultery he found a perfumed manageress.