The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (4 page)

‘The items of clothing B have
labels from the tailor Roger Morcel, Rue Haute-Sauvenière, in Liège.

‘As for the revolver, it's a
model that was discontinued two years ago.

‘If you wish to leave me your
address, I will send you a copy of the report I'll be drawing up for my
superiors.'

By eight that evening, Maigret had
finished with the formalities. The German police had handed the dead man's
clothes over to him along with the ones in the suitcase, which the technician had
referred to as clothing B. And it had been decided that, until further notice, the
body
would be kept at the disposition of
the French authorities in the mortuary refrigerator unit.

Maigret had a copy of Joseph Van
Damme's public record: born in Liège of Flemish parents; travelling salesman,
then director of a commission agency bearing his name.

He was thirty-two. A bachelor. He had
lived in Bremen for only three years and, after some initial difficulties, now
seemed to be doing nicely.

The inspector returned to his hotel
room, where he sat for a long time on the edge of his bed with the two cheap
suitcases in front of him. He had opened the communicating door to the neighbouring
room, where nothing had been touched since the previous day, and he was struck by
how little disorder the tragedy had left behind. In one place on the wallpaper,
beneath a pink flower, was a very small brown spot, the only bloodstain. On the
table lay the two sausage bread rolls, still wrapped in paper. A fly was sitting on
them.

That morning, Maigret had sent two
photos of the dead man to Paris and asked that the Police Judiciaire publish them in
as many newspapers as possible.

Should the search begin there? In Paris,
where the police at least had an address, the one where Jeunet had sent himself the
thirty thousand-franc notes from Brussels?

Or in Liège, where clothing B had been
bought a few years before? In Rheims, where the dead man's shoes had come
from? In Brussels, where Jeunet had wrapped up his package of 30,000 francs? Bremen,
where he had died and where a certain Joseph Van Damme had come to take a look at
his corpse, denying all the while that he had ever known him?

The hotel manager
appeared, made a long speech in German and, as far as the inspector could tell,
asked him if the room where the tragedy had taken place could be cleaned and rented
out.

Maigret grunted his assent, washed his
hands, paid and went off with his two suitcases, their obviously poor quality in
stark contrast with his comfortably bourgeois appearance.

There was no clear reason to tackle his
investigation from one angle or another. And if he chose Paris, it was above all
because of the strikingly foreign atmosphere all around him that constantly
disturbed his habits, his way of thinking and, in the end, depressed him.

The local tobacco – rather yellow and
too mild – had even killed his desire to smoke!

He slept in the express, waking at the
Belgian border as day was breaking, and passed through Liège thirty minutes later.
He stood at the door of the carriage to stare half-heartedly out at the station,
where the train halted for only thirty minutes, not enough time for a visit to Rue
Haute-Sauvenière.

At two that afternoon he arrived at Gare
du Nord and plunged into the Parisian crowds, where his first concern was to visit a
tobacconist.

He was groping around in his pockets for
some French coins when someone jostled him. The two suitcases were sitting at his
feet. When he bent to retrieve them, he could find only one, and looking around in
vain for the other, he realized that there was no point in alerting the police.

One detail, in any case, reassured him.
The remaining suitcase had its two keys tied to the handle with a small string. That
was the suitcase containing the clothing.

The thief had
carried off the one full of old newspapers.

Had he been simply a thief, the kind
that prowl through stations? In which case, wasn't it odd that he'd
stolen such a crummy-looking piece of luggage?

Maigret settled into a taxi, savouring
both his pipe and the familiar hubbub of the streets. Passing a kiosk, he caught a
glimpse of a front-page photograph and even at a distance recognized one of the
pictures of Louis Jeunet he had sent from Bremen.

He considered stopping by his home on
Boulevard Richard-Lenoir to kiss his wife and change his clothes, but the incident
at the station was bothering him.

‘If the thief really was after the
second suit of clothes, then how was he informed in Paris that I was carrying them
and would arrive precisely when I did?'

It was as if fresh mysteries now hovered
around the pale face and thin form of the tramp of Neuschanz and Bremen: shadowy
forms were shifting, as on a photographic plate plunged into a developing bath.

And they would have to become clearer,
revealing faces, names, thoughts and feelings, entire lives.

For the moment, in the centre of that
plate lay only a naked body, and a harsh light shone on the face German doctors had
done their fumbling best to make look human again.

The shadows? First, a man in Paris who
was making off with the suitcase at that very moment. Plus another man who – from
Bremen or elsewhere – had sent him instructions. The convivial Joseph Van Damme,
perhaps? Or perhaps not! And then there was the person who, years ago, had worn
clothing B … and the one who, during the struggle, had bled all over him.
And the person who had
supplied the 30,000
francs to ‘Louis Jeunet' – or the person from whom they had been
stolen!

It was sunny; the café terraces, heated
by braziers, were thronged with people. Drivers were hailing one another. Swarms of
people were pushing their way on to buses and trams.

From among all this seething humanity,
here and in Bremen, Brussels, Rheims and still other places, the hunt would have to
track down two, three, four, five individuals …

Fewer, perhaps? Or maybe more …

Maigret looked up fondly at the austere
façade of police headquarters as he crossed the front courtyard carrying the small
suitcase. He greeted the office boy by his first name.

‘Did you get my telegram? Did you
light a stove?'

‘There's a lady here, about
the picture! She's in the waiting room, been there for two hours
now.'

Maigret did not stop to take off his hat
and coat. He didn't even set down the suitcase.

The waiting room, at the end of the
corridor lined with the chief inspectors' offices, is almost completely
glassed-in and furnished with a few chairs upholstered in green velvet; its sole
brick wall displays the list of policemen killed while on special duty.

On one of the chairs sat a woman who was
still young, dressed with the humble care that bespeaks long hours of sewing by
lamplight, making do with the best one has.

Her black cloth coat had a very thin fur
collar. Her hands, in their grey cotton gloves, clutched a handbag made, like
Maigret's suitcase, of imitation leather.

Did the inspector
notice a vague resemblance between his visitor and the dead man?

Not a facial resemblance, no, but a
similarity of expression, of social
class
, so to speak.

She, too, had the washed-out, weary eyes
of those whose courage has abandoned them. Her nostrils were pinched and her
complexion unhealthily dull.

She had been waiting for two hours and
naturally hadn't dared change seats or even move at all. She looked at Maigret
through the glass with no hope that he might at last be the person she needed to
see.

He opened the door.

‘If you would care to follow me to
my office, madame.'

When he ushered her in ahead of him she
appeared astonished at his courtesy and hesitated, as if confused, in the middle of
the room. Along with her handbag she carried a rumpled newspaper showing part of
Jeunet's photograph.

‘I'm told you know the man
who—'

But before he could finish she bit her
lips and buried her face in her hands. Almost overcome by a sob she could not
control, she moaned, ‘He's my husband, monsieur.'

Hiding his feeling, Maigret turned away,
then rolled a heavy armchair over for her.

‘
Did he suffer
much?' she asked, as soon as she could speak again.

‘No, madame. I can assure you that
death was instantaneous.'

She looked at the newspaper in her hand.
The words were hard to say.

‘In the mouth?'

When the inspector simply nodded, she
stared down at the floor, suddenly calm, and as if speaking about a mischievous
child she said solemnly, ‘He always had to be different from everyone
else …'

She spoke not as a lover, or even a
wife. Although she was not yet thirty, she had a maternal tenderness about her, and
the gentle resignation of a nun.

The poor are used to stifling any
expression of their despair, because they must get on with life, with work, with the
demands made of them day after day, hour after hour. She wiped her eyes with her
handkerchief, and her slightly reddened nose erased any prettiness she
possessed.

The corners of her mouth kept drooping
sadly though she tried to smile as she looked at Maigret.

‘Would you mind if I asked you a
few questions?' he said, sitting down at his desk. ‘Was your
husband's name indeed Louis Jeunet? And … when did he leave you for
the last time?'

Tears sprang to
her eyes; she almost began weeping again. Her fingers had balled the handkerchief
into a hard little wad.

‘Two years ago … But I
saw him again, once, peering in at the shop window. If my mother hadn't been
there …'

Maigret realized that he need simply let
her talk. Because she would, as much for herself as for him.

‘You want to know all about our
life, isn't that right? It's the only way to understand why Louis did
that … My father was a male nurse in Beaujon. He had set up a small
herbalist's shop in Rue Picpus, which my mother managed.

‘My father died six years ago, and
Mama and I have kept up the business.

‘I met Louis …'

‘That was six years ago, did you
say?' Maigret asked her. ‘Was he already calling himself
Jeunet?'

‘Yes!' she replied, in some
astonishment. ‘He was a milling machine operator in a workshop in
Belleville … He earned a good living … I don't know why
things happened so quickly, you can't imagine – he was in a hurry about
everything, as if some fever were eating at him.

‘I'd been seeing him for
barely a month when we got married, and he came to live with us. The living quarters
behind the shop are too small for three people; we rented a room for Mama over in
Rue du Chemin-Vert. She let me have the shop, but as she hadn't saved enough
to live on, we gave her 200 francs every month.

‘We were happy, I swear to you!
Louis would go off to work in the morning; my mother would come to keep me company.
He stayed home in the evenings.

‘I
don't know how to explain this to you, but – I always felt that something was
wrong!

‘I mean, for
example … it was as if Louis didn't belong to our world, as if the
way we lived was sometimes too much for him.

‘He was very sweet to
me …'

Her expression became wistful; she was
almost beautiful when she confessed, ‘I don't think many men are like
this: he would take me suddenly in his arms, looking so deeply into my eyes that it
hurt. Then sometimes, out of the blue, he would push me away – I've never seen
such a thing from anyone else – and he'd sigh to himself, “Yet I really
am fond of you, my little Jeanne … ”

‘Then it was over. He'd keep
busy with this or that without giving me another glance, spend hours repairing a
piece of furniture, making me something handy for housework, or fixing a clock.

‘My mother didn't much care
for him, precisely because she understood that he wasn't like other
people.'

‘Among his belongings,
weren't there some items he guarded with particular care?'

‘How did you know?'

She started, a touch frightened, and
blurted out, ‘An old suit! Once he came home when I'd taken it from a
cardboard box on top of the wardrobe and was brushing it. The suit would have been
still good enough to wear around the house. I was even going to mend the tears.
Louis grabbed it from me, he was furious, shouting cruel things, and that evening –
you'd have sworn he hated me!

‘We'd been married for a
month. After that …'

She sighed and looked at Maigret as if
in apology for having nothing more for him than this poor story.