Maigret and the Spinster (12 page)

Was he even aware of the presence of Dandurand, standing there waiting to shut the door behind him? Hesitantly, he murmured to himself:

“I wonder…”

It was not intentional, but this habit of his had dismayed and confused others besides the former lawyer. What did he want? What notion had he got hold of now? Was it significant or trivial? There was no way of telling. He was nodding to himself, his heavy eyebrows knitted. At last he murmured:

“Oh! And by the way, I forgot to tell you…I gave your name, in case there were any messages for me…Meanwhile, will you please come upstairs with me. If the phone rings, we’re bound to hear it up there.”

“If you wouldn’t mind waiting a moment, I’ll just get my key.”

On the fifth-floor landing, the Chief Superintendent paused.

“I think you told me that it was shortly after midnight. Were you wearing slippers?”

He looked down at Monsieur Charles’s feet, at present clad in brown kid slippers.

“I presume you didn’t normally ring the bell.”

“Juliette used to wait for me at the door…I didn’t even have to knock.”

“Right!…Come on in…Was there a light on in the foyer?”

“No. A lamp was lit in the sitting room, and the door was open.”

“One moment…I’ll switch on the sitting-room light.”

“That light wasn’t on, Chief Superintendent, only that fake alabaster table lamp over there.”

Monsieur Charles, though inwardly uneasy, was pretending to enter into the spirit of the game, as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“As you see,” he seemed to be saying, “you can’t scare me with your tricks. I have nothing to fear, nothing to hide. On the contrary, I am as anxious as you are to arrive at the truth. If you want to re-enact the events of that night, I will cooperate…”

And aloud he said:

“I should mention that I was wearing this same suit, but with a white scarf instead of a tie.”

“I was carrying—sorry, no, I had slipped it into my jacket pocket—an envelope containing…”

“Later…for the present, if you don’t mind, we’ll concentrate on tidying up this room. I daresay you know exactly where everything ought to go.”

Both men looked very solemn, and Monsieur Charles, with tongue in cheek, was scrupulously careful to put every chair in the correct position, stepping back now and then to get a better view.

“There…that’s about right.”

“Tell me this…When Madame Boynet went to the door to let you in, I presume she used her cane?”

“She could barely walk without a cane.”

“Can you describe what she was wearing?”

“That’s easy. She had on a green flannel dressing gown over her nightdress. I remember noticing that her stockings were bunched around her ankles.”

“Both stockings?”

“Yes, both! She usually wore two stockings, if that’s what you want to know. And shabby, felt-soled slippers. Juliette took no pride in her appearance. In fact, I think she got some sort of a kick out of looking her worst, and that night she certainly did, with her hair all over the place, her face shiny with cream, and her eyes puffy.”

“Did you notice if there were any other lights on in the apartment? You say you never left this room?”

“That is correct.”

“Where was Madame Boynet sitting?”

“At her desk, which she proceeded to open. She knew that I had come to settle accounts with her.”

“One moment…Where did she get the key from?”

At this, the lawyer seemed momentarily nonplused.

“I…as a matter of fact, I don’t recall…I think she must have had it in the pocket of her dressing gown.”

“Come now, Monsieur Dandurand…Her reason for opening the desk when you were about to discuss money matters must have been to refer to the relevant papers.”

“Obviously…”

Monsieur Charles, suddenly looking grave, reflected.

“You’re right…I must admit it hadn’t struck me…”

“What did you talk about all this time?”

“We never talked much…I think I mentioned that I felt a cold coming on, to explain why I was wearing a scarf…I also told her that it would probably be necessary for me to go to Béziers.”

Maigret’s glance swept the room. His next question seemed even more irrelevant.

“Were all the clocks going?”

Some of them had stopped by now, and the Chief Superintendent, scarcely aware of what he was doing, began winding them up. They did not all show the same time.

“I didn’t notice.”

What could it possibly matter, anyway?

“You will observe, Monsieur Dandurand, that although Mademoiselle Paucot’s apartment is three floors beneath us, we can hear her piano almost as clearly as from your apartment. Sound carries in this building…which is just as well, as I can’t fail to hear your telephone if anyone calls me at your number…To proceed…Were you sitting where you are now?…Now, about that envelope you mentioned, containing…”

“Fifty-two thousand francs…the quarterly rents from the house on Rue d’Antin…”

“Did she count the bills?”

“She invariably did.”

“Did she know you kept a note of the numbers?”

“I never told her…While she was pinning the thousand-franc bills together in bundles of ten, I drew her attention to the fact that lately we had not been getting any replies to our letters addressed to the establishment at Béziers. The woman we had put in charge there, and who…”

He looked at Maigret. The Chief Superintendent, it seemed to him, was not listening, and, what was more, he evidently attached no importance to what he was saying. Smoking his pipe, Maigret gazed from one to another of the family photographs. Those of the three children especially seemed to interest him. Then his eyes fixed on another photograph, the only studio portrait in the apartment, of a voluptuous young woman of about thirty, with provocative eyes and breasts. A fine-looking woman, in fact, and none other than Juliette herself.

“Go on, Monsieur Dandurand.”

“In our sort of business, it’s difficult if not impossible to exercise direct control, and, as we have already explained, where irregularities occur, one has no legal redress. Which explains why…”

Maigret went and opened the dining-room door, and then shut it again.

“Go on, go on…Pay no attention to me…”

Dandurand, somewhat disconcerted, talked on as best he could, and this time Maigret even walked out of the room.

“I suggested going to Béziers to look into things myself…It seemed to me that the only way of ascertaining the average receipts was to talk to the girls…”

“Go on,” persisted the Chief Superintendent, from a distance.

“As you wish…I remember remarking that the drop in income—it had fallen by a third in the last month—could not be attributed solely to the fact that it was the off season, and…”

Eventually, the Chief Superintendent reappeared in the doorway. He looked at Monsieur Charles in some bewilderment, as if to say:

What does this fellow think he is doing here, and talking to himself too!

“Tell me…while you were discussing these matters, you didn’t happen to hear any sounds in the apartment, did you? Were you making any effort to keep your voice down?”

“I was talking very quietly. Juliette was always afraid of waking her niece, even though she was sedated. She was also mistrustful of the Hungarians next door, whom she could hear shouting and quarreling all day long. She’d been trying to get rid of them for months, but they resorted to every means in their power to thwart her.”

“What did she do with the fifty-two thousand francs?”

“She still had them in her hand when she saw me out…”

“In the envelope?”

“I think she had put the notes back in the envelope, yes…”

“What sort of envelope?”

“Just an old envelope I had in my desk…Let me think…It was buff-colored…What letters did I get that day? Yes! I’m almost sure it was a Crédit Lyonnais envelope, with my name and address typed on it.”

“Did you ever see the envelope again?”

“Never.”

He could not help sounding faintly contemptuous. Did Maigret really think he could impress him with all this twaddle?

“Do you mind if I smoke, Chief Superintendent?”

“Ah! That reminds me. When you used to call on your friend Juliette, did you ever smoke in here?”

“Often.”

“Cigarettes, or what?”

“I see you are better informed than I had supposed, and if I had anything on my conscience…But how did you know? I understood that you had never seen Juliette alive…”

This time, if not actually worried, he could not help being intrigued.

“Well…there are no ashtrays in this room. I’m quite sure I never left any cigarette butts lying about. As to the ash…”

He laughed uneasily.

“To tell you the truth, Chief Superintendent, I don’t understand. I’ll tell you the whole story, and then you’ll see why I’m so puzzled. Once, many years ago, I came in here smoking my pipe. Now Juliette was a woman with strong views of her own, and she disapproved of pipe smoking in the presence of a woman. But then some nights it took us several hours to get through our business, so I got into the habit of bringing a package of cigarettes up with me. Not wishing to drop ash all over the place, I would spread a piece of paper on the corner of the desk and use it as an ashtray, and I would take it away with me when I left…”

Maigret’s abstracted expression did not change.

“How you could possibly know? That really is…unless…”

“Unless what?” echoed the Chief Superintendent.

“Unless there was someone hidden in the apartment, spying on everything we said and did…And even then, it would have had to be someone who had access to you, and could tell you…”

“What does it matter? When Juliette Boynet saw you to the door, she had the fifty-two thousand francs in her hand…As to the envelope, you probably used it for your cigarette ash…Juliette locked the door behind you, I take it?”

“She bolted it.”

“Did you go straight back to your apartment? Did you see anyone on the way? Did you hear anything? I suppose you can’t tell me whether the old woman went straight to bed?”

“I don’t know…”

They listened. The insistent ringing of a bell was clearly to be heard. Maigret went to the door, muttering:

“Excuse me…That must be the phone call I’ve been waiting for…”

The door to the fourth-floor apartment had been left ajar. The lights were on. The telephone stood on the desk.

“Hello!…Torrence?”

“Is that you, Chief? I’m still at Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule…”

“And Gérard?”

“I haven’t seen him. Listen…It’s a bit involved…I don’t think I ought to say too much on the telephone…”

“Hold on a minute.”

The inspector wondered what was going on. The fact was that Maigret could hear footsteps just above his head. The sound, he reckoned, must be coming from Juliette Boynet’s bedroom. He could hear it distinctly. Monsieur Charles’s felt-shod feet and stealth were to no avail. His comings and goings were plainly audible.

Thus, it was obvious that the former lawyer could hear from his study everything that went on in the apartment on the floor above.

“Hello!…Are you still there, Chief?”

“Shut up!”

“Shall I hold on?”

“I said shut up!”

Suddenly, leaving the receiver lying on the desk, he made a dash for the floor above. When he opened the door of Madame Boynet’s apartment, Monsieur Charles, looking somber but impassive, seemed on the way to come out.

“Was it the call you were expecting?”

“Yes, I haven’t quite finished yet. If you’d care to come down…”

“Sorry…I didn’t want to intrude.”

Maigret intercepted what appeared to be a look of chagrin, if not anguish, in the eyes of this hitherto cool customer.

“I’m coming, Chief Superintendent…If I’d known that…”

“You go first.”

“Where are we going?”

“Into your study. Shut the door. Stay where you are, and, if you don’t mind, keep your hands on the table.”

He picked up the receiver again.

“I’m listening…”

“Ah! I thought we’d been cut off…Well, Chief, here goes…When I got here I inquired of the concierge, and she told me that Gérard Pardon hadn’t come in yet but that his wife was at home…I went and stood guard near the front door. And then it began to rain.”

“Never mind that.”

“I’m soaked through! Oh, hell!…I didn’t dare pop into the café on the corner for a drop of something. I stood there for hours…And then, just now, within the last quarter of an hour, a young woman arrived in a taxi. She looked worried. I recognized her by her red hat as Gerard’s sister, Mademoiselle Berthe, the one you pointed out to me.”

“Go on…”

Little did he know, as he made his report, that the Chief Superintendent was listening with only half an ear, while his eyes were fixed on Monsieur Charles, whom he was inspecting from head to foot. As to the former lawyer, he was making no secret of the awkwardness of having to stand there with both hands flat on the desk.

What had he been doing up there? It was the first time since Juliette’s death that he had had a few minutes to himself in her apartment.

“Go on…I’m listening.”

“I had no instructions. The girl went upstairs…After a while, it occurred to me that she might be the bearer of bad news, so I went up after her. I knocked at the door. She was the one who let me in. There’s no foyer…Madame Pardon was in the kitchen, sobbing. She looked at me in terror, and gasped:”

“‘
Is he dead
?’ ”

Monsieur Charles must have caught a look of astonishment on Maigret’s face. He frowned.

“What then…?”

“It was very embarrassing, I can tell you, Chief…I asked the girl what she had come for. She replied that we were a heartless bunch, and that if anything had happened to her brother, she would hold us responsible…Well, what with one of them in tears and the other in a rage, I couldn’t get any sense out of either of them!”

“So I could see that there was nothing for it but to be patient, and in the end I gathered that Gérard had been to see his sister…Apparently, he was behaving like a madman…He wanted money, and he wanted it at once.”

“She tried to calm him down, and asked him what he wanted the money for…”