Maigret's Dead Man (7 page)

‘What about the next day? Do you think he
wasn't being followed any more?'

‘Maybe yes. It's more than likely.
But I also said that he changed his mind, around five o'clock. Don't forget he
phoned somebody and asked for an envelope.'

‘That's true.'

Although she was not
convinced, she thought it wise to answer with a sigh:

‘You're probably right.'

Then there was silence. From time to time a page
turned, and the sock in Madame Maigret's lap grew longer in tiny increments.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Without
looking up, he said:

‘Out with it!'

‘It's nothing. … It surely
doesn't mean anything … Only I was just thinking that he got it wrong since he was
killed in the end …'

‘Where did he go wrong?'

‘About going home. I'm sorry. Read
your book …'

But he didn't read, at least not very
attentively, because it was he who looked up first.

‘You're forgetting the car that broke
down,' he said.

And he felt that a new avenue had suddenly opened
up for his thoughts, that a curtain had been whisked aside and that beyond it he would glimpse
the truth.

‘What we need to know is how long exactly
it was before the yellow car was repaired.'

He had ceased speaking for her benefit. She knew
it and made sure she didn't interrupt him again.

‘A car breakdown is an unpredictable event.
It is an accident, something which by definition upsets the most carefully made schemes. It
follows that events turned out to be different from what had been planned.'

He gave his wife a shrewd look: it was she who
had set him on the right path.

‘
Suppose he died
because the car had broken down?'

Without further ado he slammed the book shut and
left it on his knees. Then he reached for the phone and dialled the number of the Police
Judiciaire.

‘Give me Lucas. If he's not in his
office, he'll be in mine … Is that you, Lucas? … What? … There's
been a development? … Wait a moment …'

He wanted to say his piece first: he was afraid
he would be told what he had worked out for himself.

‘I want you to send a man out to Quai
Henri-IV, Ériau or Dubonnet, if they're available. I want him to question all the
concierges, all the tenants not only of number 63 and the immediately neighbouring houses but
also in all the houses and apartments. The street isn't very long. Some of the locals must
have noticed the yellow car, and I'd like to know, as accurately as possible, exactly when
it broke down and what time it drove away again. Wait! That's not all! The men in the car
might have wanted a spare part. There must be garages in the area. I want them questioned too.
That's all for the moment … over to you!'

‘One moment, sir, I have to go next door
…'

That meant that Lucas was not alone and that he
did not want to speak in front of the person who was with him.

‘Hello? … Right … I
didn't want her to hear what I was saying. It's further information about the car.
An old lady turned up half an hour ago, and I'm interviewing her in your office.
Unfortunately, she seems a bit crazy to me …'

It was unavoidable. However
little publicity is given to a police investigation, the Police Judiciaire sooner or later
attracts all the crazy people, male and female, in Paris.

‘She lives on Quai de Charenton, a little
further along than the warehouses at Bercy.'

It reminded Maigret of a case he had investigated
a few years before in a strange little house located in that part of the city. In his
mind's eye, he saw Quai de Bercy, with the warehouse gates on the left, the tall trees and
the stone parapet of the Seine on the right. Further on, after a bridge whose name he had
forgotten, the road widened. One side was lined with one- or two-storied houses which put him in
mind more of the suburbs than of the inner city proper. There were always many barges moored
just there, and he pictured the docks piled high with barrels as far as the eye could see.

‘What does this old woman do for a
living?'

‘That's the hitch. She's a
fortune-teller and clairvoyant …'

‘Oh dear.'

‘That was my first reaction too. She talks
the hind leg off a donkey and she has this very unnerving way of looking at you straight in the
eye. At first, she stated categorically that she never reads newspapers and tried to make me
believe that there was no point because she only had to go into a trance to be up to date with
everything that goes on.'

‘You pressed her?'

‘Yes. In the end she admitted that she
might just have glanced at a paper which one of her customers had left behind.'

‘So?'

‘She'd read a description of the
yellow car. She claims she saw it on Wednesday evening less than a hundred metres from her front
door.'

‘What time was that?'

‘About nine.'

‘Did she see who was in it?'

‘She saw two men going into a
building.'

‘And is she able to say which
building?'

‘It's a small bar on the corner of
the Quai and a street that runs off it. It's called the Petit Albert.'

Maigret bit hard on the pipe between his teeth
and avoided looking at Madame Maigret, for he was reluctant to let her see the tiny flame
dancing in his eyes.

‘Is that all?'

‘That's more or less everything
interesting that she told me. But that didn't stop her yakking on and on for half an hour
at an alarming rate. Would it be better if you talked to her?'

‘Yes!'

‘Would you like me to bring her round to
your place?'

‘Just a moment. Do we know how long the car
remained outside the Petit Albert?'

‘About half an hour.'

‘And it drove off towards the centre of
town?'

‘No. It headed along the river bank towards
Charenton.'

‘Was any kind of parcel transferred from
the building to the car? Do you see what I'm getting at?'

‘No, nothing. She reckons that the men
weren't carrying anything. And that's what puzzles me. There's also
the time factor. I'm wondering what the men could have done with the
body between nine that night and one in the morning. They can't have just gone driving
around the countryside. Shall I bring the old woman round now?'

‘Yes. Get a taxi and hang on to it. Bring
an inspector with you. He can wait downstairs with the old woman.'

‘You're going to leave your
house?'

‘Yes.'

‘But what about your bronchitis?'

It was kind of Lucas: he said
‘bronchitis' instead of ‘cold', which made it sound more serious.

‘Don't you worry about
that.'

Madame Maigret began stirring on her chair and
almost said something.

‘Tell the inspector not to let her run off
while you're coming up the stairs. Some people get sudden urges to change their
minds.'

‘I don't think she's one of
them. She's keen to see her photo in the papers along with all her titles and
qualifications. She wanted to know where the photographers were.'

‘Well, have her photographed before you
leave. She'll like having her picture taken.'

He hung up, gave Madame Maigret a look full of
gentle irony then lowered his eyes to his Alexandre Dumas, which he hadn't finished and
probably wouldn't finish this time round. It would have to wait until he was ill on some
other occasion. He also spared a glance, but one of disdain, for the cup of herbal tea.

‘To work!' he
exclaimed as he stood up and made straight for the cupboard, from which he produced the decanter
of calvados and a liqueur glass with a gilt rim.

‘It was worth filling you full of aspirin
so that you would sweat it out!'

In the annals of the Police Judiciaire are a
number of ‘stake-outs' which are invariably trotted out for the benefit of new
recruits. Among them is one of Maigret's, now fifteen years old. It was late autumn, at
the very worst time of year, especially in Normandy, where the low, leaden sky makes the days
even shorter. For three days and two nights, Maigret had remained outside the garden gate on a
deserted road on the outskirts of Fécamp, waiting for a man to emerge from the house
opposite. There were no other houses in sight, only fields. Even the cows were under cover. To
ask to be relieved, he would have had to walk two kilometres to find a phone. No one knew he was
there. He had not told anyone where he would be. For three days and two nights it had poured
unrelentingly, and the icy rain had swamped the tobacco in his pipe. Perhaps all told, three
farm labourers in clogs had walked past. They had stared at him suspiciously and hurried on
their way. Maigret had had nothing to eat with him, nothing to drink and, worst of all, by the
end of day two, he ran out of matches for his pipe.

Lucas had another under his belt, as part of what
was called The Case of the Halfwit Invalid. To keep watch on a small hotel – to be
specific, it was on the corner of Rue de Birague, just off Places des Vosges – he had been
installed in a room on the other side of the street, disguised as a
paralysed old relic. Every morning a nurse sat him down by the window, where he stayed all day.
He wore a fan-shaped false beard. He was fed with a spoon. That had lasted for ten days, and
afterwards he could hardly use his legs.

Maigret now recalled these and a few other such
tales and sensed that the stake-out he was beginning would become no less famous. At any rate,
one to be savoured – especially by him.

It was almost a game, but he was playing it with
total seriousness. At about seven o'clock, for example, just as Lucas was about to leave,
he had asked him quite casually:

‘Care for a little glass of
something?'

The shutters of the bar were closed, as they had
been when he had got there. The lights were on. The atmosphere inside was like that of any small
bar after hours, with the tables set out and sawdust scattered on the floor.

Maigret went to get the drinks from the shelves
behind the counter.

‘Picon-grenadine? Export-cassis?'

‘An export.'

And as if he were trying to identify with the
dead bar-owner, Maigret had served himself a Suze.

‘Who do you reckon could to do the
job?'

‘There's Chevrier. His parents used
to run a hotel at Moret-sur-Loing, and he helped them until he was called up for his military
service.'

‘Have a word with him this evening so he
can make
arrangements. Cheers! He'll have to find a woman who can
cook.'

‘He'll manage.'

‘Another?'

‘No thanks. I'd better be
off.'

‘Send Moers to me here at once. Tell him to
bring his bag of tricks.'

Maigret walked him to the door, glanced out
briefly at the now deserted riverbank, the barrels lined up in rows and the barges moored for
the night.

It was a small bar no different from many others
you find not in Paris itself but in the suburbs, the typical small café which features in
postcards or cheap prints. The house stood on a corner. It had one storey, a red-tile roof and
yellow walls on which was traced in large brown letters: ‘Au Petit Albert'. And on
each side, with amateurish flourishes: ‘Wines – All Day Snacks'.

In the yard at the back, under an awning, Maigret
had found half barrels painted green and containing shrubs which in summer would be put outside
on the pavement with two or three tables to make a terrace.

He had now made himself at home in the empty
building. Since no fires had been lit for several days, the air was cold and damp. Several times
he had cast dubious glances at the large stove in the middle of the bar, which had a chimney
pipe that rose black and gleaming into the air before disappearing through a wall.

Why not after all, since there was an almost full
bucket of coal?

Under the same awning at the back he found
kindling
next to a small axe and a chopping block. There were some old
newspapers in one corner of the kitchen.

A few minutes later the fire was roaring in the
stove, and the inspector was standing in front of it with his feet firmly planted and his hands
behind his back, in that characteristic pose.

Basically, Lucas' old woman was not as
crazy as all that. They had gone to her house. In the taxi on the way, she had talked volubly
all the time, but now and then she glanced at them slyly to gauge the effect she was
producing.

Her house was less than a hundred metres away. It
was small, just two storeys, what they call a detached house with a small garden. Maigret had
wondered how, given the unalterable fact that her house was on the same side of the street, she
had been able to see what was going on some considerable distance along her pavement, especially
after night had fallen.

‘You didn't stay out on the pavement
all that time?'

‘No.'

‘Nor on your doorstep?'

‘I was in my house.'

She was right. The front room, which was
amazingly neat and clean, had not only windows that gave on to the street but a side window
which faced towards the Petit Albert and thus offered a view of a large part of the
street
.
Since there were no shutters, it was only natural that the headlights of a
parked car should have attracted the attention of the old lady.

‘Were you alone here at the
time?'

‘Madame Chauffier was with me.'

A midwife who lived in a
street a little further along. She had been checked out. It was true. Contrary to what might
have been expected by anyone who had seen the old woman, the inside of the house had the same
domestic look as the houses of all spinsters. There was none of the clutter with which
fortune-tellers normally surround themselves. On the contrary, the plain deal furniture came
straight from Boulevard Barbès, and there was light-brown linoleum on the floor,

‘It was bound to happen,' she said.
‘Have you seen what's written above the front of his café? Either he's
one of them or else it's sacrilege.'

She had put water for the coffee on to boil. She
was absolutely determined to make Maigret drink a cup. She explained to him that the Petit
Albert was a book of magic dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

‘But what if his name happens to be Albert?
And if he is really little?' replied Maigret.

‘As a matter of fact he is short, I know.
I've seen him many times. But that's not a proper reason. There are matters with
which it is unwise to meddle.'

About Albert's wife, she said:

‘Tall woman, dark hair, not very clean. I
wouldn't like to eat anything she cooked. It always reeks of garlic.'

‘How long have the shutters been
closed?'

‘I don't know. The day after the day
I saw the car I stayed in bed. I had flu. When I was up and about again, the café was shut.
I thought: and good riddance too.'

‘Was it a noisy place?'

‘No. Hardly anyone ever went there. But
those men
working the crane you can see on the wharf used to go there for
their lunch. There was also the cellarman from Cess the wine merchants. And men from the boats
would go there and have a drink at the counter.'

She had asked particularly about which newspapers
her photo would be in.

‘But I must insist that they don't
say in print that I tell fortunes. It would be a bit like them saying that you're just a
policeman on the beat.'

‘I wouldn't take offence.'

‘It wouldn't be good for me,
professionally.'

Time to get moving! He was done with the old
woman. He had drunk his coffee and then Lucas and he had walked to the café on the corner.
It was Lucas who had automatically tried the lever handle of the door. It was open.

That was odd. A small bar whose door had been
left unlocked for four days and had survived unscathed, with bottles on the shelves behind the
bar and cash in the till.

The bottom of the walls was painted in shiny
brown gloss up to a metre from floor level, then pale-green above it. There were the same
advertising calendars as are found in every country café.

Basically, the Petit Albert was not really as
Parisian as all that, or rather, like most Parisians, it had stuck to its country roots. Just by
looking at it, it was obvious it had been done out like this deliberately, with almost loving
care, and its like would have been found in any village in France.

The same was true of the bedroom upstairs:
Maigret, with his hands in his pockets, had inspected the premises from top to bottom. Lucas had
followed him with some
amusement because, with his overcoat and hat removed,
Maigret seemed to be actually taking possession of a new house. In less than half an hour, he
had made himself more or less at home and from time to time went and stood behind the bar.

‘Well, one thing's for sure: Nine
isn't here.'

He had looked everywhere for some trace of her
from cellar to attic and also searched the yard and the small garden, which was cluttered with
old chests and empty bottles.

‘What do you think, Lucas?'

‘I don't know, sir.'

In the bar there were just eight tables, four
arranged along one wall, with two facing them and the last two in the middle of the room, by the
stove. It was to one of the latter that the two men kept being drawn from time to time, because
the sawdust under the legs of one of the chairs had been carefully swept up.

Why, if not to remove bloodstains?

But who had cleared away the victim's
plates and cutlery? Who had washed them and the wine glasses?

‘Maybe they came back later?'
suggested Lucas.

But there was one very curious thing. Whereas
everything in the whole place was neat and tidy, a bottle, just the one, had been opened and
left on the counter. Maigret had been careful not to touch it. It was a bottle of cognac, and it
could only be supposed that whoever had helped himself – or themselves – had not
bothered with glasses but had drunk straight from the bottle.

The unknown visitors had been upstairs. They had
rummaged through all the drawers but had stuffed underwear and other
contents back inside them before shutting them again.

The oddest thing of all was that two frames
hanging on the bedroom wall, which had probably contained photographs, were now empty.

It was not Albert's appearance that they
had wanted to suppress: there was another picture of him standing on the chest of drawers:
cheerful, round face, kiss-curl over his forehead, the look of a comedian about him, just as the
owner of the Caves du Beaujolais had said.

A taxi pulled up outside. The sound of footsteps
on the pavement. Maigret walked to the door and drew back the bolt.

‘Come in,' he said to Moers, who was
carrying a rather heavy case. ‘Have you eaten? No? Would you like an aperitif?'

It turned out to be one of the most curious
evenings and strangest nights of his life. From time to time he would go and watch Moers, who
had set to work on a lengthy task, looking everywhere, first in the bar itself, then the
kitchen, the bedroom, in all the rooms in the building, for the faintest trace of
fingerprints.

‘Whoever picked up this bottle
first,' he said, ‘was wearing rubber gloves.'

He had also taken samples of sawdust from near
the all-important table. Meanwhile, Maigret had searched a dustbin and found remnants of
cod.

Only a few hours earlier his dead man had no name
and in Maigret's mind he had been just a blurred figure. Now
not only
did they have a photo of him, but he was living in his house, using his tables and chairs,
fingering the clothes which had belonged to him and handling objects which had been his. Almost
the moment they had arrived it was with a certain satisfaction that he had pointed out to Lucas
a coat on a clothes hanger upstairs: it was a jacket made of the same material as the dead
man's trousers.

In other words, he had been right. Albert had
come home and changed his clothes, as was his habit.

‘Do you think, Moers, old son, that
it's very long since anyone was here?'

‘I'd say someone was here
today,' replied the young man, after examining the traces of alcohol on the counter next
to the open bottle.

It was quite possible. The place had been left
wide open to all and sundry. But pedestrians passing by didn't know. When people see
closed shutters, it rarely occurs to them to try the handle of the door to see if it is
locked.