Maigret's Dead Man (4 page)

He did not feel sleepy but did feel sluggish, and
his movements were slower than usual. He climbed a narrow staircase which was out of bounds to
the public. It led him to the attics of the Palais de Justice. He half opened a door with
frosted glass panels and, observing Moers hunched over his instruments, continued on his way as
far as Records.

Even before he could open his
mouth to speak, the fingerprint expert had given a negative shake of his head.

‘Nothing, sir …'

In other words, Nine's husband had never
been in trouble with the law.

Maigret walked out of the card-index library and
went back to see Moers. He took off his overcoat and, after a moment's hesitation, removed
his tie, which was too tight around his neck.

The dead man was not here, yet his presence was
just as strong as it was in the corpse stored in the racks of the Forensic Institute –
drawer 17 – where the mortuary assistant had put him.

No one spoke much … Everyone got on with
their own work without even noticing that a sliver of sunshine was slanting in through the attic
window. In one corner stood an articulated manikin which Maigret had often used before and now
used again. Moers, who had had time to give the clothes a good shaking in their various waxed
paper bags, was at work analysing the fragments which he had collected in this way.

Maigret meanwhile busied himself with the
clothes. With the careful gestures of a window-dresser, starting with the shirt and underpants,
he began to dress the manikin, which was about the same size as the dead man.

He had just put the jacket on it when Janvier
walked in, looking fresh as a daisy because he had slept in his own bed and had not got up until
day was breaking.

‘So they got him, sir.'

He looked round for Moers and
gave him a wink, which meant that Maigret was not in a chatty mood.

‘There's been a report of another
yellow car. Lucas, who looked into it, says it's not ours. In any case the number plate
ends in nine, not eight.'

Maigret took a step back, to get a view of his
handiwork.

‘See anything odd?' he asked.

‘Wait a moment … No … I
can't see … The man was a bit smaller than the manikin. The jacket looks too short
…'

‘That all?'

‘The slit made by the knife isn't
very wide.'

‘Nothing else?'

‘He wasn't wearing a
waistcoat.'

‘What strikes me is that the jacket
isn't made of the same cloth as the trousers and isn't the same shade.'

‘That happens, you know.'

‘But hold on a minute. Take a close look at
the trousers. They're virtually new. They're part of a suit. This jacket is part of
another suit but is at least two years old.'

‘It certainly seems like it.'

‘Now the man was quite dapper if his socks,
shirt and tie are anything to go by … Phone the Caves du Beaujolais and the other bars.
Try to find out if yesterday he was wearing a jacket and a pair of trousers which didn't
match.'

Janvier sat himself down in a corner. His voice
formed a kind of background noise in the lab. He called the bars one by one and repeated time
after time:

‘It's the Police Judiciaire, the
inspector you talked to yesterday … Could you tell me if …'

Unfortunately, the man had
not taken his raincoat off anywhere. He may have unbuttoned it, but no one had paid any
attention to the colour of his jacket.

‘What do you do when you get
home?'

Janvier, who had been married for only a year,
answered with a knowing smile:

‘I give my wife a kiss …'

‘After that?'

‘I sit down and she brings me my
slippers.'

‘After that?'

Janvier thought a moment and then hit his
forehead with the heel of his hand.

‘Got it! I change my jacket!'

‘Do you keep a jacket to wear in the
house?'

‘No. But I put an old one on that I feel
more comfortable in.'

And with these words they caught a glimpse of the
private life of this unidentified man. They could picture him arriving home and perhaps, like
Janvier, kissing his wife, or if not just taking his jacket off and putting on an old one. Then
he would eat.

‘What's today?'

‘Thursday.'

‘So yesterday was Wednesday. How often do
you eat out? In inexpensive restaurants, the kind where our man would have gone?'

As he spoke, Maigret slipped the beige raincoat
over the shoulders of the manikin. Yesterday evening, at about this time, certainly not much
later, this gaberdine was still on the back of a living, breathing man who walked into the
Caves du Beaujolais, which was just across the way, virtually under their
noses; they had only to look out through the skylight at the opposite bank of the Seine to see
it.

He was calling Maigret. He was not asking to
speak to just any chief inspector or an inspector or, like those who consider their case to be
very important, the commissioner of the Police Judiciaire.

It was Maigret he wanted.

But he had admitted: ‘You don't know
me …'

All the same he had added: ‘You used to
know my wife, Nine.'

Janvier was wondering what his boss was driving
at with all this talk of restaurants.

‘Do you like fish pie?'

‘I love it. It gives me indigestion, but I
eat it whenever I get the chance.'

‘Right! Does your wife make it
often?'

‘No. It's too much bother. It's
a dish people don't often make at home.'

‘So you have it in restaurants whenever
it's on the menu …'

‘Yes …'

‘And do you find it on menus very
often?'

‘I don't know really … Let me
see … Sometimes on a Friday.'

‘And yesterday was Wednesday. Get me Dr
Paul on the phone.'

The doctor, who was writing up his report, was
not surprised by Maigret's question.

‘Could you tell me if there were truffles
in the fish pie?'

‘Absolutely not
… I would have found fragments …'

‘Thanks for your help. See, Janvier? There
weren't any truffles in the fish pie! That eliminates expensive restaurants, which usually
include them. I want you to go down to the inspectors' room. You can get Torrence and two
or three others to give you a hand. The switchboard won't like it one bit because
you'll be using all their lines for some time. Call all the restaurants one after the
other, starting with those located in the parts of town where you were making inquiries
yesterday. Find out if any of them had fish pie on their menu last night … Wait …
Try the ones with names having some connection with the south of France first. You're more
likely to have luck with them.'

Off Janvier went, not feeling either proud of or
overjoyed with the job he had just been landed with.

‘Have you got a knife, Moers?'

The morning was wearing on, and Maigret still had
not given up on his dead man.

‘Slide the point of the blade into the slit
in the raincoat … Good … Now don't move …'

He lifted the material slightly so that he could
see the jacket underneath.

‘The holes in the clothes don't line
up … Now try angling the blade differently … A little more to the left … Now
to the right … Try higher … And now lower …'

‘I get your drift.'

Some of the forensic experts and technicians who
were at work in the enormous lab looked on curiously and exchanged amused glances.

‘They still don't
line up. There's a gap of a good five centimetres between the cut in the jacket and the
one in the gaberdine … Bring me a chair … Give me a hand …'

They sat the manikin down, a manoeuvre that
called for careful handling.

‘That's it … When a man is
sitting down, leaning against a table, for example, his overcoat may ride up … Try it
…'

But they failed dismally in their efforts to
align the two slits, which logically should have been located one exactly above the other.

‘That's it!' exclaimed Maigret,
as if he had just solved an intricate mathematical equation.

‘You mean that when he was killed he
wasn't wearing his raincoat?'

‘It's virtually certain.'

‘But there's a slit in the raincoat
that looks as if it was made with a knife.'

‘It was done afterwards, to make it look
right. Now no one wears a raincoat in a house or a restaurant. By going to the trouble of
doctoring the gaberdine, someone was trying to make us believe that the stabbing took place in
the open air.'

‘… whereas the crime was actually
carried out indoors,' said Moers, completing his thought.

‘And for the same reason, the same person
also took the risk of dumping the body in Place de la Concorde, where the murder was not
committed …'

He knocked his pipe out on his heel, retrieved
his tie,
looked some more at the manikin, which seemed even more alive now
that it was seated. From the back or the side, when its featureless, colourless face was
invisible, the effect was striking.

‘Have you found any leads?'

‘Almost nothing so far. I haven't
finished. But in the arch of the sole I did find small quantities of some very interesting mud.
It's soil impregnated with wine, the sort you might find in the wine cellar of a house in
the country where a cask has just been broached.'

‘Carry on. Phone me in my
office.'

When he went in to see the commissioner he was
greeted with:

‘Well, Maigret? And how is
your
dead man
?'

It was the first time the expression had been
used. The head of the Police Judiciaire must have been informed that Maigret had had his claws
in the case since two in the morning.

‘So they managed to get him after all, eh?
I admit that yesterday I was more or less convinced that you were dealing with a practical joker
or a lunatic.'

‘I didn't see it that way. I believed
what he said from the first time he phoned.'

Why was that? Maigret could not have put it into
words. It certainly wasn't because the man had asked for his help rather than anyone
else's. As he spoke to the commissioner, he allowed his eyes to stray out across the river
to the opposite bank, which was in full sunlight.

‘The public prosecutor has decided the
examining magistrate for this case is to be Coméliau. They'll both be
dropping in at the Forensic Institute this morning. Do you intend to join them?'

‘What would be the point?'

‘At least see Coméliau, or call him.
He can be touchy.'

Maigret was quite well aware of this.

‘You don't think it was some gangland
score being settled?'

‘I don't know. I'll find out,
though it doesn't feel like it to me. The criminal fraternity aren't in the habit of
going to the trouble of hanging their victims out to dry in Place de la Concorde.'

‘As you wish. Do whatever you think best. I
expect someone will recognize him sooner or later.'

‘I'd be surprised.'

This was another feeling which he would have been
hard pressed to explain. In his mind, it made perfect sense. But as soon as he tried to pin it
down, even for his own satisfaction, the waters grew muddy.

But there was no getting away from Place de la
Concorde. It followed that someone wanted the body to be found, and found quickly. It would have
been easier and less dangerous, for example, to throw it into the Seine, where it might have
remained for days if not weeks before it was fished out.

The victim was not a rich man or a famous person
but a nonentity, a man of no importance.

So why, if they wanted the police to get
interested in him, rearrange his face after he was dead and empty his pockets of everything
which might have been used to identify him?

Still, they hadn't
removed the label on the jacket. But that was obviously because they knew that he was wearing
ready-made clothes which had been sold by the thousand.

‘You look worried, Maigret.'

But all he could do was repeat:

‘It doesn't hang together
…'

Too many details which did not fit. One detail in
particular bothered him; it quite upset him, in fact.

At what time had the last phone call been made?
As things stood, the last sign of life the man had given was the note handed in at the post
office in Faubourg Saint-Denis.

That had happened in the clear light of day. Ever
since eleven that morning, the nameless man had not missed any opportunity for making contact
with Maigret.

Even in the note, he had been appealing directly
to him, and more insistently than ever. He had even asked him to alert officers on duty so that
any one of them would have been aware of the situation and been ready to come to his aid in the
street at the first sign he gave.

But the fact was that he had been killed between
eight and ten in the evening.

What had he been doing between four and eight
o'clock? There had been no sign of him, no trace. Just silence, a silence which had struck
Maigret the previous evening, even though he had kept his concerns to himself. It had reminded
him of a real-life underwater disaster which, as it unfolded, had been followed all over the
world minute by minute on the radio. At certain times, listeners had heard the signal sent out
by the men entombed in the submarine stranded on the ocean bed and could imagine
the rescue vessels circling on the surface. The intervals between signals grew longer. Then
suddenly, after many hours: nothing.

But Maigret's unnamed dead man had no valid
reason for keeping quiet. He could not have been kidnapped in full daylight in a busy Paris
street. And he had not been killed before eight o'clock.