Maigret and the Spinster (13 page)

“He replied with a spiteful laugh: ‘You’ll find out when you see tomorrow’s papers…For God’s sake, give me all you can spare.’ ”

“And she gave him exactly a hundred and thirty francs, leaving herself with only ten francs. He made a wild dash for the door. She tried to follow him, but he leaped onto a moving bus…”

“I don’t know what to do next, Chief…I had to leave them to telephone…Should I go back there? Gerard’s wife says he means to kill himself. If you ask me, I…”

“Fine!” said Maigret, cutting him off in mid-sentence.

“But…what am I to do now?”

But the Chief Superintendent had already hung up, and, without a pause, he ordered Monsieur Charles to empty his pockets.

“You want me to…?”

“Empty your pockets!”

“If you say so…”

Slowly, he did so, taking things out one by one and laying them on the table: a shabby wallet, a key, a penknife, an exceedingly grubby handkerchief, various papers, a small box of cough lozenges, a tobacco pouch, a pipe, and a box of matches.

“Turn your pockets inside out…Take off your jacket…”

“Do you want me to strip?”

If Madame Maigret had been there, she might have been tempted to repeat the remark, suitably amended, which she had made to her husband:

“
What surprises me is that you haven’t been goaded into slapping him
!”

And indeed, of the two, it was Monsieur Charles who was the more impassive, the more chilly, with a coolness verging on insolence. He took off his jacket, to reveal a shirt with frayed grayish cuffs. His waistcoat was passable. His braces were in no better condition than his shirt, and the waistband of his underpants showed above his trousers,

“Shall I carry on?”

If the Chief Superintendent had not exercised considerable self-control, he would have done more than slap the fellow, he would have driven his fist into his face.

“Do you want me to take off my slippers?”

“Yes.”

This exercise revealed no hidden scrap of paper, only a hole in one sock.

“I might point out. Chief Superintendent, that it is eleven o’clock at night, and that even if you had a warrant, properly drawn up and duly signed, I should be entitled to show you the door at this hour…Not that I would think of doing such a thing. I just want to draw your attention…”

“Sit down.”

He dialed a number.

“Make yourself at home!” murmured the former lawyer sarcastically.

“Hello!…Put me through to Lucas, will you? Is that you?…Not yet?…Keep at it, my boy…No! I can’t spare the time…Whom have you got there?…Berger?…Oh, very well!…Tell him to hop into a taxi and come to Bourg-la-Reine…Yes…Fourth floor…Thanks…Good luck!”

He hung up and remained motionless, staring down at the desk in front of him.

“If you’re staying, perhaps you’d care to join me in a drink?”

Maigret quelled him with a look. Ten minutes went by, a quarter of an hour. Cars roared past on the Route Nationale. The piano was silent. The whole house slept.

At last, downstairs, there could be heard the slam of the front door, followed by footsteps on the stairs.

“Come in, Berger.”

It must have been pouring outside, because, though he had come by taxi, the inspector’s hat and shoulders were wet.

“Let me introduce you to Monsieur Charles…He is rather on edge tonight, and I’m afraid he might do something foolish…I pointed out to him that we have no legal right to spend the night in his apartment, but he doesn’t mind! I will leave him in your charge. He’s welcome to go to bed if he so wishes, and if he does, be sure you look after him as if he were your nearest and dearest. Understood? I’ll probably look in tomorrow morning. Don’t worry if I’m a bit late, but don’t let him out. He might catch cold.”

He buttoned up his coat and filled his pipe, gently pressing down the tobacco with his thumb.

“I’d keep off his brandy, if I were you. I would think it isn’t up to much.”

He picked up the wallet and papers that Dandurand had taken from his pockets.

“Did you tell the taxi to wait?”

“No, Chief.”

“Never mind. Good night.”

And he left the two men alone together. He considered going back up to the fifth floor, but thought better of it. Dandurand was not the man to leave incriminating evidence lying about.

Madame “Saving-Your-Presence,” in her night attire, was waiting for him in the hall downstairs. Her head was twisted even farther to one side than usual.

“What’s going on, Chief Superintendent? Has there been another murder in the house?”

He was not listening. He could barely make out the whispered words, and he replied absently:

“Maybe…Let me out, please.”

I
t was still raining the following morning. The rain was soft, cheerless and hopeless, like a widow’s tears. It could be felt rather than seen, although it spread over everything like a cold layer of varnish and dotted the Seine with countless little vibrant circles. Those starting out for work as late as nine o’clock might well have imagined that they were in time to catch the milk train, with the gas lamps still alight in the lingering darkness.

Maigret, as he reached the top of the stairs at police headquarters, glanced involuntarily at the “aquarium” and could not shake off the feeling that he would see Cécile sitting there in her usual place, humble and resigned, as she had been on her last visit. An ugly thought had formed in his mind this morning, he could not imagine why. No doubt, as he walked along half asleep, sheltering close to the walls of the dripping houses, the girl in the movie house, Nouchi, and Monsieur Charles had flitted like shadows across his consciousness. And now, in the corridor leading to his office, it occurred to him to wonder whether Cécile and Monsieur Dandurand…

He had no grounds for any such suspicion. It was distasteful to him. It sullied his recollections, and yet the Chief Superintendent’s thoughts kept reverting to it.

“Wait a minute…There’s someone…The Chief Commissioner would like to see you at once.”

It was the guard, who was preventing Maigret from going into his own office.

“Did you say there was someone in there?” he asked.

A minute or so later, he was knocking at the Chief Commissioner’s door.

“Come in, Maigret. Feeling better? Look, I’ve taken the liberty of using your office as a waiting room for a visitor. I couldn’t think where else to put him. Besides, it’s your pigeon, really. Here, read this.”

Maigret stared blankly at the proffered visiting card, which read:

Jean Tinchant

Minister of State at the Foreign Office

—begs the Chief Commissioner of the Police Judiciaire to give every assistance to Monsieur Spencer Oats of the Institute of Criminology of Philadelphia, who has been highly recommended to us by the United States Embassy

“What does he want?”

“To study your methods.”

And the Chief Commissioner could not help laughing as he watched Maigret stride away, with shoulders hunched and fists clenched, for all the world as if he were bent on pounding the American criminologist to a pulp.

“I’m delighted to meet you, Chief Superintendent…”

“One moment, Monsieur Spencer…Hello!…Switchboard?…Maigret speaking. Any messages for me?…He hasn’t been found yet?…Get me Bourg-la-Reine nineteen…”

Quite a likable fellow, this American. A tall, scholarly-looking young man, with red hair and a thin face, wearing a sober suit of good cut, and speaking with a slight, rather pleasant accent.

“Is that you, Berger?…Well?…”

“Nothing, Chief…He bedded down on the divan, fully dressed. I must say I’m feeling hungry, and there isn’t a thing to eat in the flat. I daren’t take the risk of slipping out to buy some croissants. Will you be coming soon?…No! He’s as good as gold. He even went so far as to say he didn’t blame you, and that he’d have done the same in your place…He’s quite confident that you will soon realize you have made a mistake.”

Maigret hung up and went across to his stove, which he proceeded to light, much to the surprise of the American.

“What can I do for you, Monsieur Spencer?”

He deliberately chose to call him by his Christian name because he had not the least idea how to pronounce Oats.

“To begin with, Chief Superintendent, I should very much like to hear your views on the psychology of the murderer…”

Maigret, meanwhile, had picked up his mail from his desk and was opening it.

“Which murderer?” he asked, glancing through his letters.

“Why…murderers in general.”

“
Before
or
after
?”

“What do you mean?”

Maigret smoked his pipe, read his letters, warmed his back, and seemed to attach no importance to this disjointed interchange.

“What I mean is, are you referring to murderers
before
or
after
they have committed the crime? Because, needless to say,
before
they are not yet murderers…For thirty, forty, fifty years of their lives, longer sometimes, they are just people like anyone else, aren’t they?”

“Of course…”

At long last, Maigret looked up and, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, said:

“What makes you think, Monsieur Spencer, that just killing one of his own kind should change a man’s character from one minute to the next?”

He went over to the window and gazed out at the little circles on the Seine.

“So what it really comes down to,” said the American, “is that a murderer is a man like any other…”

There was a knock on the door. Lucas came in, carrying a file of papers. Catching sight of the visitor, he seemed about to beat a retreat.

“What is it, my boy? Ah! Yes…Well then, you’d better take the file across to the D.P. P.’s office…I take it the Hôtel des Arcades is still under surveillance?”

Lucas brought him up to date on the Polish case, but Maigret had not lost the thread of his argument.

“Why does a man commit murder, Monsieur Spencer? From motives of jealousy, greed, hatred, envy; sometimes, though more rarely, from necessity…In other words, he may be driven by any one of the human passions…Now every one of us is subject to these passions to a greater or lesser degree. My neighbor invariably opens his window on summer nights and blows his hunting horn. Consequently, I hate him. But I very much doubt if I shall murder him…And yet, only last month, a retired colonial servant, whose temper had been shortened by recurring bouts of tropical fever, fired a shot at the man who lived in the apartment above him, because he had a wooden leg and would insist on pacing up and down all night, pounding the floorboards.”

“I can see what you mean…But what about the psychology of the murderer
afterward
?”

“That’s no concern of mine…That’s a matter for juries and prison governors and guards…My job is to find the culprit. And for that purpose, all that concerns me is his personality
before
the act. Whether he had it in him to commit that particular murder, and how and when he committed it…”

“The Chief Commissioner gave me to understand that you might perhaps allow me to be present at…”

He wouldn’t be the first! So much the worse for him!

“I know you are working on the Bourg-la-Reine case, and I have followed the newspaper reports with great interest…Do you know already who did it?”

“I know who didn’t, at any rate…All the same, he…Allow me to ask you a question, Monsieur Spencer. A man believes himself to be a suspect. Rightly or wrongly, he imagines the police are in possession of evidence incriminating him. His wife is expecting a child at any moment. There isn’t so much as a penny in the house…This man rampages into his sister’s flat like a madman, demanding money, every penny she’s got. His sister gives him a hundred and thirty francs…What does he do with it?”

And Maigret pushed a newspaper across the desk to his visitor. It was the evening paper of the previous day, with the photograph of Maigret laying his hand on Gérard Pardon’s shoulder.

“Is this the young man?”

“That’s him…Last night, from this office, I broadcast his description to all police stations up and down the country. A watch is being kept on all frontiers…A hundred and thirty francs…”

“Are you saying he’s innocent?”

“I am convinced that he is not guilty of the murder of either his aunt or his sister…If he had asked for the money earlier in the day, I would have concluded that he wanted it to buy a revolver to shoot himself.”

“But he’s innocent?”

“Precisely, Monsieur Spencer…that’s the point I’m trying to make. An innocent man may have the seeds of guilt in him, just as a guilty man may be innocent at heart…Luckily, by the time the boy got hold of the hundred and thirty francs, the gunsmiths had already put up their shutters. I presume, therefore, that he’s on the run…So the question is, how far could he go with a hundred and thirty francs?…Just about across the Belgian frontier…”

He picked up the receiver and asked to be put through to the Forensic Laboratory.

“Hello!…Maigret here…Who is that speaking? Oh, it’s you, Jaminet! I want you to get your gear together and rustle up an assistant…Yes…And wait for me downstairs in a taxi.”

Then, turning to the American:

“We may be about to make an arrest.”

“You know who did it?”

“I think so, but I’m not sure…To tell the truth, I’d be inclined to…Would you mind waiting for me here for a few minutes, Monsieur Spencer?”

Maigret went through to the Palais de Justice, making use of the notorious communicating door which should have been bricked up years ago, that same door without which Cécile could not have died where she did. It was so convenient! What good had it done to repeat, year after year, for the past ten or was it twenty years…?

The Chief Superintendent knocked at the Examining Magistrate’s door, but, when invited to take a seat, shook his head.

“I can’t stay…I’ve got someone waiting for me…What I came for, Judge, was to ask if you wouldn’t mind too much if I were to arrest a man who may turn out to be innocent. I should point out, mind you, that he’s a nasty type, with a number of convictions for sexual offenses, and he’d scarcely have the nerve to lodge a complaint.”