Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard (3 page)

“Not with her, at any rate.”

“What do you make of that business of the shoes? The obvious answer would be that he bought them today, except that they aren't new.”

“He wouldn't have dared. You heard what she said.”

“He wouldn't have dared to buy a loud tie, either.”

“It will be interesting to see whether the daughter is like her mother.”

Before returning to the Quai des Orfèvres, they stopped for a meal at a brasserie. Maigret telephoned his wife, to tell her to expect him when she saw him.

The brasserie too smelled of winter, with damp coats and hats hanging from all the hooks, and dense clouds of steam rising from the dark windows.

At the gatehouse of Police Headquarters, Maigret was met by the man on duty, who announced:

“There's a young woman waiting to see you. She says she has an appointment. I sent her straight up.”

“Has she been here long?”

“Twenty minutes or so.”

The fog had turned to a thin drizzle, and the dusty treads of the main staircase were intricately patterned with damp footprints. Although most of the offices were empty, here and there a crack of light showed under a door.

“Do you want me to stay?”

Maigret nodded. Santoni had been with him on the case from the start. He might as well see it through to the end.

There was a young woman sitting in an armchair in the waiting room, though all that could be seen of her was a pale blue hat. There was only one dim light on in the room. The desk clerk was reading an evening paper.

“She's waiting to see you, chief.”

“I know.”

And to the young woman:

“Mademoiselle Thouret? Will you come with me, please.”

He switched on the green-shaded light that hung above the chair across the desk from his own, and invited her to take a seat. She did so, and he could see that she had been crying.

“My uncle has told me of my father's death.”

He did not say anything at first. Like her mother, she had a handkerchief in her hand, but hers was rolled into a ball, and she was kneading it, as Maigret used to knead plasticine when he was a child.

“I thought my mother would be with you.”

“She's gone back to Juvisy.”

“How is she?”

What could he say?

“Your mother was very brave.”

Monique was not unattractive. She did not look much like her mother, though she was of the same heavy build. This was less marked in her case, because her young skin was softer and her body more supple. She was wearing a well-cut suit. The chief superintendent found this a little surprising. She had certainly not made it herself, nor had it been bought in a cheap shop.

A few drops of moisture gathered on her eyelashes as she asked:

“What happened exactly?”

“Your father was stabbed with a knife.”

“When?”

“This afternoon, between half-past four and a quarter to five.”

“I simply can't understand it.”

Why was it that he had a feeling she was not being altogether sincere? Her mother too had expressed incredulity, but being the sort of woman she was, that was only to be expected. Basically, as far as Madame Thouret was concerned, it was a disgraceful thing to get oneself murdered in an alleyway off the Boulevard Saint-Martin. She had planned her life in every detail, and not only her own life but also that of her family, and murder had no place in her scheme of things, especially this murder, with the corpse wearing brown shoes, and a tie that might almost be described as red!

As for Monique, though she seemed on the whole a sensible girl, she was obviously apprehensive. There would be questions that she would prefer not to answer, and revelations that she would prefer not to hear.

“Did you know your father well?”

“But…of course.”

“Of course you knew him in the way that most children know their parents. What I mean is, were you and he in one another's confidence? Did he ever talk to you about his private life and private thoughts?”

“He was a good father.”

“Was he a happy man?”

“I suppose so.”

“Did you and he ever meet in town?”

“I don't understand. Do you mean did we ever run into one another in the street?”

“You both worked in Paris. I know you didn't go to work or return home on the same train.”

“We kept different office hours.”

“You might have met for lunch, occasionally.”

“We did sometimes.”

“Often?”

“No, not very often.”

“Used to go and fetch him from the shop?”

She hesitated.

“No. We would meet in some restaurant or other.”

“Did you ever telephone him at work?”

“Not as far as I can remember.”

“When did you last meet for lunch?”

“Several months ago. Before the summer holidays.”

“Whereabouts?”

“At La Chope Alsacienne in the Boulevard Sébastopol.”

“Did your mother know?”

“I daresay I mentioned it to her. I don't remember.”

“Was your father of a cheerful disposition?”

“Fairly cheerful, I think.”

“How was his health?”

“I've never known him to be ill.”

“Had he many friends?”

“We saw hardly anyone, apart from my aunts and uncles.”

“Have you many?”

“Two aunts and two uncles.”

“Do they all live in Juvisy?”

“Yes. Not very far from us. It was my Uncle Albert, my Aunt Jeanne's husband, who told me of my father's death. My Aunt Céline's house is a little further away.”

“Are they both sisters of your mother?”

“Yes. And Aunt Céline's husband, my Uncle Julien, also works on the railways.”

“Is there a man in your life, Mademoiselle Monique?”

She looked a little flustered.

“Surely, this is no time to go into that. Don't you want me to see my father?”

“What do you mean?”

“I understood from my uncle that I would be required to identify his body.”

“Your mother and your aunt have already done that. However, if you wish to…”

“No. I presume I shall see him when he's brought home.”

“Just one more thing, Mademoiselle Monique. When you met your father in town for lunch, can you remember if you ever saw him wearing brown shoes?”

She didn't answer at once. To gain time, she repeated:

“Brown shoes?”

“Well, very light brown would perhaps be a better description, what, in my day, if you'll pardon the expression, used to be called goose-dung shoes.”

“I can't remember.”

“Did you ever see him wearing a red tie?”

“No.”

“When did you last go to the cinema?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Here in town?”

“In Juvisy.”

“I won't keep you any longer. I hope you haven't missed the last train.”

“It leaves in thirty-five minutes.”

She glanced at her wristwatch, and stood up. There was a pause.

“Good night,” she said, at last.

“Good night, mademoiselle, and thank you.”

Maigret went to the door with her, and closed it behind her.

Maigret, though he could not say why, had always had a special affection for the section of the Grands Boulevards that stretches from the Place de la République to the Rue Montmartre. To put it another way, he felt that he was on his home ground. It was here, in the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, just a few hundred yards from the passageway in which Louis Thouret was killed, that Maigret and his wife went to the pictures almost every week. Arm in arm, they walked the short distance from their flat to what they regarded as their local cinema. And opposite was the brasserie where he enjoyed going for a plate of
choucroute
.

Further on, approaching the Opéra and the Madeleine, the boulevards were more spacious and elegant. In the area between the Porte Saint-Martin and the Place de la République the streets were narrower and darker, and so densely packed with people on the move as to make one feel dizzy.

He had left home at about half-past eight, and, walking at a leisurely pace in the gray morning light, had taken barely a quarter of an hour to reach the intersection of the Rue de Bondy and the Boulevard, which formed a little square dominated by the Théâtre de la Renaissance. The weather was less damp than on the previous day, but colder. Maigret was looking for the premises of the firm of Kaplan et Zanin where, according to his wife, Louis Thouret had spent the whole of his working life, including his last day on earth.

The number he had been given was that of a very old building, visibly subsiding. On either side of the gateway, which was wide open, were a number of white enamel plaques, with black lettering, indicating that among the lessees were a mattress-maker, a secretarial college, a wholesaler in feathers (third floor, on the left, Staircase A), an upholsterer and a qualified masseuse. The concierge in the lodge, which faced the archway, was engaged in sorting the mail.

“Could you please direct me to Kaplan et Zanin?” he asked her.

“My dear sir, they closed down three years ago, three years next month.”

“Were you here then?”

“I shall have been here twenty-six years in December.”

“Did you know Louis Thouret?”

“Know him? Why of course I knew Monsieur Louis. By the way, what has become of him? It must be all of four or five months since he last called in to say hello to me.”

“He's dead.”

Abruptly, she pushed the letters aside.

“But he was such a healthy man! What did he die of? A heart attack, I'll be bound, the same as my husband.”

“He was stabbed with a knife, not far from here, yesterday afternoon.”

“I haven't seen a paper today.”

Anyway, there was nothing much in the papers, just a few terse lines reporting the murder, as if it were an everyday occurrence.

“Whoever could have wanted to kill a fine man like him?”

She was a worthy soul herself, a little creature, but full of life.

“For more than twenty years he went past this lodge four times a day, and never once did he fail to stop and say a pleasant word or two. When Monsieur Kaplan gave up the business, he was so shattered that…”

She had to stop, to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

“Is Monsieur Kaplan still alive?”

“I can give you his address if you like. He lives in the Rue des Acacias, near the Porte Maillot. He's a fine man, too, in his own way. I believe old Monsieur Kaplan is still alive.”

“What did the firm deal in?”

“You mean you don't know?”

She seemed to think that the whole world ought to have heard of the firm of Kaplan et Zanin. Maigret explained:

“I'm from the police. I have to find out all I can about Monsieur Thouret and everything to do with him.”

“We always called him Monsieur Louis. Everybody did. Most people didn't even know his surname. If you wouldn't mind waiting a moment…”

She returned to the mail, murmuring to herself as she sorted the last few letters:

“Monsieur Louis murdered! I wouldn't have believed it possible! A man of such…”

Having slotted the letters into the various pigeonholes, she wrapped a woolen shawl about her shoulders, and turned down the anthracite stove.

“Come and I'll show you.”

When they were under the archway, she explained:

“This building was due to be pulled down three years ago, to make way for a cinema. At that time, the tenants were given notice, and I myself made arrangements to go and live with my daughter in the Nièvre region. That was the reason why Monsieur Kaplan gave up the business. Though the fact that business was none too brisk may also have had something to do with it. Young Monsieur Kaplan, Monsieur Max as we called him, didn't see eye to eye with his father. This way…”

Beyond the archway was a courtyard, at the end of which could be seen a large building with a glass roof which looked like the entrance hall of a railway station. On the rough-cast wall only a few letters of the name
Kaplan et Zanin
were still legible.

“There were no longer any Zanins in the firm, when I came to this place twenty-six years ago. At that time old Monsieur Kaplan was running the business single-handed. Children would stop in the street and stare at him, because he had the look of an Old Testament patriarch.”

The door was not shut. The lock had been wrenched out. Everything around him was now in decay, though a few years earlier it had been part of a living world, the world of Louis Thouret. What precisely the place had been used for, it was hard to tell. It was a huge room, rising to a very high glass roof, the panes of which were now either missing or opaque with grime. Two galleries, one above the other, such as are often to be seen in big stores, ran right round the room, and there were marks on the wall where there had once been rows of shelves.

“Whenever he came to see me…”

“Did he come often?”

“Every two or three months, I'd say, and he never came empty-handed. And each time, I may tell you, Monsieur Louis insisted on coming in here to take a look round, and you could tell that his heart was heavy. I've known there to be as many as twenty girl packers in here, even more towards the end, and especially around about Christmas time, and, quite often, they worked late into the night. This wasn't a retail business. Monsieur Kaplan sold direct to the cheap multiple stores up and down the country, and to market traders of all sorts. There was so much stuff in here that one could scarcely move. Monsieur Louis was the only one who knew where everything was. Heaven knows, there was variety enough, false beards, cardboard trumpets, Christmas tree decorations of every sort, paper streamers, carnival masks, and seaside holiday souvenirs.”

“Was Monsieur Louis in charge of the stock?”

“Yes. He always wore a gray overall. Over there in the right-hand corner, see, Monsieur Kaplan sat in his glass-walled office. The young Monsieur Kaplan, I mean, after his father had his first heart attack, and stopped coming in. He had a secretary, Mademoiselle Léone, and an elderly bookkeeper, who worked in a little cubby hole upstairs. No one had the least inkling of what was in store for them. One day, without warning—I'm not sure exactly when, but it must have been in October or November, because there was a nip in the air already—Monsieur Max Kaplan called his staff together, and told them that the firm was to be closed down, and that he had found a buyer for the stock.

“Everyone believed at the time that the building was to come down the following year, to make way for a cinema, as I told you.”

Maigret listened patiently, looking about him, and trying to picture the scene in all its former glory.

“The front of the building is due for demolition as well. All the tenants have been given notice. Some have already left. The others have hung on, and, as things have turned out, they made the right decision, seeing that they're still here. The only trouble is that, since the building was sold, the new owners have refused to maintain it. There are goodness knows how many lawsuits pending. The bailiff turns up once a month or so. I've packed up all my things twice already.”

“Do you know Madame Thouret?”

“I've never set eyes on her. They lived in the suburbs, in Juvisy.”

“She's still there.”

“Have you met her? What's she like?”

Maigret's only reply was a grimace, leaving her in no doubt as to his feelings.

“I'm not surprised. I had a feeling that he wasn't particularly happy in his home life. His real life was here. I've always said that when the blow fell he was the hardest hit of all. Especially when you think that he was at the age when it's difficult to change the habits of a lifetime.”

“How old was he?”

“Forty-five or forty-six, I'd say.”

“Do you know what he did after he left here?”

“He never spoke of it. He must have been through some hard times. For a long time after he left, I never saw him. Then one day, when I was out shopping and in a tearing hurry as usual, I caught sight of him sitting on a bench. It was a shock. You just wouldn't expect to see a man like him idle in the middle of the day. I was on the point of going up to him, when it struck me that it could only cause him embarrassment, so I turned off into a side street.”

“How long was this after the business closed down?”

It was even colder here, under the glass roof, than in the courtyard.

“Would you like to come into the lodge, and warm up?” she suggested. “It's hard to say how long after. It wasn't in the spring. There were no leaves on the trees. It was probably just about the end of the winter.”

“When was the next time you saw him?”

“Oh! long afterwards, in midsummer. The thing that struck me most was that he was wearing goose-dung shoes. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason. Please go on.”

“It was so out of character. He invariably wore black shoes when he worked here. He came into the lodge, and put a small parcel down on the table. It was wrapped in white paper and tied with gold ribbon. It was a box of chocolates. He sat down in this chair here. I made him a cup of coffee, and slipped out to get a half-bottle of Calvados from the shop on the corner, leaving him to keep an eye on things in the lodge.”

“What did he have to say for himself?”

“Nothing special. But you could see that it made him happy, just to be breathing the air of this place again.”

“Didn't he refer to the change in his life?”

“I asked him how things were going, and he said he had nothing to complain of. At any rate, he obviously wasn't working office hours, seeing that he was able to call on me between ten and eleven in the morning. Another time, he came in the afternoon, and he was wearing a light tie. I teased him about it, and remarked that it made him look years younger. He was never one to take offense. Then I asked about his daughter. I've never met her, but he always carried photographs of her, right from the time when she was a few months old. He was a proud father all right, and was always ready to show the photographs to anyone.”

No recent photographs of Monique had been found on him, only the one taken when she was a baby.

“Is that all you can tell me?”

“How should I know anything more? I'm shut up in this place from morning to night. Since Kaplan's closed down, and the hairdresser vacated the first floor premises, things haven't been any too lively here.”

“Did you and he talk about that?”

“Yes. We chatted about all sorts of things, such as the number of tenants who had moved out, one after another, the lawsuits, the architects who came in from time to time studying the plans for their wretched cinema, while the walls slowly crumbled in ruins about us.”

She did not sound bitter. All the same, he was sure that she would hang on long after everyone else had left.

“How did it happen?” she asked in her turn. “Did he suffer much?”

Neither Madame Thouret nor Monique had thought to put this question to him.

“The doctor says not. Apparently he died instantly.”

“Where did it happen?”

“Not very far from here, in an alleyway off the Boulevard Saint-Martin.”

“Near the jeweler's, do you mean?”

“Yes. Someone must have been following him in the dusk. At any rate, he was found with a knife in his back.”

Maigret had telephoned the Forensic Laboratory the previous night from his home, and again this morning. The knife was a very ordinary mass-produced article, to be found on the shelves of almost any ironmonger's. It was new, and there were no fingerprints on it.

“Poor Monsieur Louis! He did so enjoy life!”

“You mean he was always cheerful?”

“It's hard to explain. He certainly wasn't an unhappy man. He always had a smile and a kind word for everyone. He was very considerate, and modest with it.”

“Was he interested in women?”

“Never! And yet there were plenty of opportunities here. Apart from Monsieur Max and the old bookkeeper, he was the only man around, and women who take jobs as packers aren't exactly strait laced as a rule.”