Maigret and the Spinster (6 page)

Needless to say, he was familiar with all such establishments, and was well known to those who ran them.

“Hello, Monsieur Charles…Let me see, what have I got for you today?”

He was at home in such places. They had become the breath of life to him, and he needed to go there every day. It did not take long for the other habitués to discover that he had formerly been a lawyer. He was occasionally asked to give legal advice.

By now, he had joined the chosen few who were admitted behind the scenes. He was no longer received as a client but as a friend.

“Have you heard that the house on Rue d’Antin is up for sale? Dédé has had some trouble, and he’s leaving next week for South America…With five hundred thousand francs to his credit…”

Maigret seemed to be lost in a dream. His head lowered, he was staring at the faded red fitted carpet. Suddenly he started. He thought he had heard a sound from the floor above. For a second, he had imagined it came from Madame Boynet’s apartment. The thought of Cécile…

“It’s only Nouchi,” said Monsieur Dandurand, with a characteristically mirthless smile.

Obviously, since Cécile was dead!

Cécile was dead! At that very moment, the Chief Commissioner of the Police Judiciaire, playing bridge at a friend’s house, was briefly describing the scene in the broom closet, the body hunched against the wall, the tall figure of Maigret bending over it.

“What did
he
say?”

“Nothing…he just stood there with his hands in his pockets…I think he was harder hit than at any time during his career. Then he left the building. I would be greatly surprised if he got any sleep tonight…Poor old Maigret.”

Maigret tapped out his pipe on the heel of his shoe, emptying the ash onto the carpet.

“Did you look after Madame Boynet’s business interests?” he asked, speaking slowly with a wry mouth, as if the words had a bitter taste.

“I knew her and her sister in Fontenay-le-Comte…You might almost say we were neighbors. It was only when I took a lease on this apartment that I discovered she owned the building. She was a widow by that time…You never knew her when she was alive, did you? I wouldn’t go so far as to say that she was mad, but she was certainly something of an eccentric. She was obsessed with money. She kept her entire fortune in the apartment, because she was terrified of being robbed by the banks.”

“Very much to your advantage, I don’t doubt!”

It did not take much effort of imagination for Maigret to envisage this man worming his way into the confidence of the elderly women who ran the establishments which he patronized. Later, Monsieur Dandurand had taken a step up the ladder and become acquainted with the landlords, whom he would join in a game of
belote
in the evenings in some bar in Montmartre.

Thus, Maître Charles Dandurand, lawyer from Fontenay, had been transformed into Monsieur Charles, adviser and associate of these gentlemen, who reposed great trust in him, since, being in the know as he was, he could be extremely useful to them in many ways.

“It was all to her advantage, Chief Superintendent!”

His long, bloodless, hairy hands fidgeted with the pipes on the table. His nostrils also sprouted tufts of gray hair.

“Surely you must have heard of old Juliette? It’s true, you’ve always specialized in murder. But your colleague, Cassieux…It all started with the house on Rue d’Antin, which was up for sale. I mentioned it to Madame Boynet, whom I always called Juliette, since we had known one another from the time when we were young. Juliette bought it. A year later, I acquired Le Paradis in Béziers on her behalf, and that is one of the most profitable establishments of its kind in the country.”

“Did she know what sort of place you were investing her money in?”

“Look, Chief Superintendent, I’ve known a few misers in my time…a lawyer in the provinces meets all sorts of people. But their greed was nothing in comparison with Juliette’s. Money had a sort of mystical fascination for her. Ask anyone in the
milieu,
as you call it at police headquarters…ask them how many of their establishments are owned by Juliette. Allow me to quote you a few figures…”

He got up and took from a wall safe a grubby ledger. As he turned over the pages, he licked his unsavory fingers.

“Last year, I remitted to Juliette five hundred and ninety thousand francs in bills…a profit of five hundred and ninety thousand francs.”

“And she kept all that money in her apartment?”

“I have every reason to believe she did, as she had ceased to be able to go out herself and she would never have entrusted her niece with such large sums of money…Oh! I can guess what you’re thinking…I realize that what has happened puts me in a false position…But I give you my word, Chief Superintendent, that you are mistaken…I have never done anyone out of a single penny. Ask any of the people concerned. I don’t have to tell you that they’re not the sort to permit any irregularity to go unpunished. Any one of them will tell you that Monsieur Charles is on the level…Would you care for a refill of tobacco?”

Maigret declined the proffered tobacco pouch and took his own out of his pocket.

“No, thanks.”

“As you prefer…I’m doing my best to give you a truthful account…As Albert would say, I am spilling the beans.”

This slang expression was accompanied by an odd smile. After all, this was a man who had spent the greater part of his life in the society of the most God-fearing citizens of Fontenay.

“Juliette had a bee in her bonnet about keeping the nature of her investments secret…She dreaded discovery…Mark you, she never saw a soul, there was nobody to poke his nose into her affairs. All the same, she went to absurd lengths—it was almost touching—to prevent discovery. For the past six months or more, since she first became housebound, I have been under orders to visit her clandestinely in her apartment. You wouldn’t believe the shifts I was put to on the days when I had to call on her.”

Footsteps on the stairs. The Siveschis had returned. They could be heard talking loudly in Hungarian, and by the time they reached the floor above a regular row had broken out.

“Every morning, the tenants’ newspapers are delivered to the lodge. The concierge sorts them out and puts them in the appropriate pigeonholes with the mail…I had to contrive to mark Juliette’s paper with a penciled cross when I collected my own. Poor Cécile, who suspected nothing, would come down and fetch her aunt’s paper a few minutes later. That same night, at midnight, I would creep upstairs without making a sound…Juliette would be waiting for me at the door, leaning on her cane.”

The entire staff of the Police Judiciaire had openly laughed at Cécile for suggesting that furniture and ornaments had been moved during the night!

“Did the niece sleep through it all?”

“Cécile? Her aunt saw to it that she did. If you have searched the apartment, as I presume you have, you must have found several bottles of sleeping pills in a drawer. On the nights when Juliette was expecting me, she always made sure that Cécile would sleep very soundly and…Forgive me, I haven’t offered you a drink…What will you have?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

“I see…You’re on the wrong track, Chief Superintendent…Of course you don’t have to believe me, but I do assure you that I couldn’t so much as wring the neck of a chicken, and I turn faint at the sight of blood.”

“Madame Boynet was strangled.”

At this, the former lawyer seemed momentarily taken aback. He looked down at his bloodless hands.

“That, too, would be beyond me. Besides, it was not in my own interest to…”

“Tell me, Monsieur Dandurand, according to your calculations, how much money did Madame Boynet keep in the apartment?”

“Approximately eight hundred thousand francs.”

“Do you know where this money was hidden?”

“She never told me…Knowing her as I did, I presumed that she never let it out of her hands, that it must be somewhere within her reach, and that, in a manner of speaking, she went to bed with her fortune.”

“And yet none of it has been found. Presumably, she also had papers, the deeds of her various properties and so on. They have vanished from her desk. What time did you return to your apartment last night?”

“Between one and half-past.”

“According to the pathologist, Madame Boynet was killed at around two o’clock in the morning. The concierge states that no one entered the building. One more question: did anything occur while you were in the apartment to suggest that Cécile might not be asleep?”

“Nothing.”

“Think hard…
Are you absolutely sure you couldn’t have left something behind in the apartment which might have made it possible for her to suspect that you had been there
?”

Monsieur Charles thought for a moment, but did not seem bothered by the question.

“I don’t see…”

“That’s all I wanted to know. Naturally, I must ask you not to leave Paris. Indeed, I should prefer it if you wouldn’t leave your apartment.”

“I understand.”

Maigret was already at the front door.

“Sorry…I almost forgot…do your friends often visit you here?” He stressed the word “friends.”

“Not one of them has ever set foot in this building. I am a careful man myself, Chief Superintendent…Not excessively careful, like my friend Juliette…I’m not obsessional. My friends, as you call them, don’t know where I live, and communicate with me through a post office box number. Still less would they be likely to know Madame Boynet’s address. They don’t even know her real name. In fact, a lot of people believed that Juliette didn’t really exist, that she was a convenient fiction dreamed up by me for my own purposes.”

More footsteps on the stairs. The voice of the concierge, out of breath:

“Just a minute, Monsieur Gérard…”

And she called out:

“Chief Superintendent! Chief Superintendent!”

Maigret opened the door and pressed the time switch to turn on the light, which had just gone out. A young man in a state of intense agitation, a stranger to him, stood trembling before him.

“Where is my sister?” he demanded, looking wide-eyed at Maigret.

“This is Monsieur Gérard,” explained Madame Benoit. “He burst in like a madman…I told him that Mademoiselle Cécile…”

“Please return to your apartment, Monsieur Dandurand!” snapped Maigret.

The door to the Siveschis’ apartment had been opened. Another door opened on the floor below.

“Come with me, Monsieur Gérard…You may return to your lodge, Madame Benoit.”

The Chief Superintendent had the key to the dead woman’s apartment in his pocket. He ushered the young man in and bolted the door.

“Have you really only just heard?”

“Is it true? Is Cécile dead?”

“Who told you?”

“The concierge…”

The apartment had been turned inside out by the technicians from the Forensic Laboratory. Drawers and cupboards had been searched, and their contents scattered all over the place.

“I want to know about my sister.”

“Yes, Cécile is dead.”

Gérard was in such a state of nervous tension that he was not even able to shed a tear. He looked about him in utter bewilderment, his face twitching so horribly that it was painful to watch.

“It’s not possible…Where is she?”

He made a dive for his sister’s bedroom, but the Chief Superintendent restrained him.

“She’s not here. Take it easy. Wait…”

He remembered having seen a bottle of rum in a cupboard. He got it and held it out to the young man.

“Have a drink. How did you find out?”

“I was in a café when…”

“Forgive me…I’m going to ask you a few questions. It’s the quickest way…What were you doing this afternoon?”

“I went to three different addresses…I was looking for a job.”

“What sort of job?”

Gérard replied with a wry smile:

“Anything I could get! My wife is expecting a baby any day now…Our landlord has given us notice…I…”

“Did you go back home for dinner?”

“No…I was in this café…”

It was only then that Maigret realized that Gérard, though perhaps not exactly drunk, had been drinking a little too freely.

“Were you looking for a job in this café?”

A hard, hostile stare.

“You too!…But, of course…just like my wife!…How can you know what it’s like to chase after nonexistent jobs from morning till night? Do you know what I did last week, three nights running? No, of course not! As if you cared! Well! I unloaded vegetables at the market, just to be able to buy food…Tonight, I went to the café to meet someone who had promised me a job.”

“Who was that?”

“I don’t know his name…He’s tall and redheaded, and he sells radio equipment.”

“What was the name of the café?”

“Do you suspect me of killing my aunt?”

He was shaking from head to foot, and seemed on the point of hurling himself like a madman at the Chief Superintendent.

“The Canon de la Bastille, if you really want to know. I live on Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule. My friend didn’t show up. I didn’t want to go back home without…”

“Haven’t you had any dinner?”

“What’s that got to do with you?…Someone had left a newspaper behind on the table…as usual, I looked first at the small ads. You can’t imagine what it’s like, plowing through the small ads, knowing…Oh well!…”

He waved a hand, as if to brush away a nightmare.

“And suddenly, there it was on page three…My aunt’s name…I couldn’t take it in at first…it was just a few lines.”

Landlady strangled in bed in Bourg-la-Reine. Last night, Madame Juliette Boynet, a real-estate owner living in Bourg-la-Reine, was…

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know. It’s a long time since I last owned a watch…About half-past nine, maybe. I hurried back home. I told Hélène…”

“Your wife, you mean?”

“Yes…I told her that my aunt was dead, and I caught the bus.”

“Did you by any chance stop for a drink first?”

“Just a small glass to buck me up. I couldn’t understand why Cécile hadn’t let me know.”

“I presume you have expectations from your aunt?”

“Yes. My two sisters and I are her heirs…I waited for a streetcar at the Châtelet and…But about Cécile…why was Cécile killed? The concierge has just told me.”