Maigret's Dead Man (15 page)

‘Did you find any of those black cloths in
Rue du Roi-de-Sicile?'

‘No. So the gang all felt safe. Who would
have thought of looking for the Picardy murderers in a low dive in the ghetto? Isn't that
right, Colombani?'

‘Absolutely right.'

‘Then suddenly Li'l Albert, feeling
threatened by men who were following him around – as you will remember, when he phoned he
said several times that they worked in relays – Li'l Albert, as I was saying, was
knifed in the back in his own bar after calling on me to protect him. He had been intending to
come to see me. That means he had information for me, and the others knew it. But here a
question arises: why did they bother to move the body to Place de la Concorde?'

They looked at him in silence, each trying vainly
to come up with an answer to this question, which Maigret had asked himself many times.

‘I refer again to Colombani's file,
which is remarkably detailed. For each of their raids on the farms, the gang
used different vehicles, preferably stolen vans. Nearly all of them were taken from streets
around Place Clichy but all inside the eighteenth
arrondissement.
That is why inquiries
were concentrated on that particular area. It was also in that part of Paris, though slightly
further out of town, that the vehicles were recovered the day after the raids.'

‘What do you conclude from that?'

‘That the gang does not own a car. A
vehicle has to be parked somewhere and can be traced.'

‘Where does that leave the yellow
car?'

‘
The yellow car was not stolen
. If
it had been we would know because the owner would have reported it, especially since it was
almost brand-new.'

‘I understand,' murmured the
commissioner, while Monsieur Coméliau, who did not, scowled and looked annoyed.

‘I should have thought of it sooner. I did
consider the possibility at one point but dismissed the idea because it seemed too complicated
and I always proceed on the basis that the truth is always simple.
The men who murdered
Li'l Albert were not the men who dumped his body in Place de la Concorde
.'

‘Who were they, then?'

‘That I don't know, but we soon
will.'

‘How?'

‘I have arranged for a personal ad to
appear in the papers. Bear in mind that around five that afternoon, when he realized that we
were unable to help him, Albert made a phone call, but not to us.'

‘You think he was asking friends to rescue
him?'

‘Perhaps. But at
least we do know that he arranged to meet somebody. And that somebody did not show up on
time.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘You're forgetting that the yellow
car broke down on Quai Henri-IV and the repair took some time to make.'

‘So the two men it was bringing arrived too
late?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Hold on a moment! I'm looking at the
file too. According to your fortune-teller, the car was parked outside the Petit Albert between
about eight thirty and nine. But the body was not left on the pavement in Place de la Concorde
until one in the morning.'

‘Perhaps they came back, sir.'

‘For the victim of a crime they had not
committed so that they could dump him somewhere else?'

‘Perhaps. I have no explanation. I'm
merely stating that it's possible.'

‘And what was happening meanwhile to
Albert's wife?'

‘Ah yes. Suppose they took her to a place
of safety?'

‘Why wouldn't they have killed her at
the same time as they murdered her husband? She was probably as much in the know as him and in
any case she had seen the murderers.'

‘Who can say she hadn't gone out?
When some kinds of men have certain kinds of business to transact, they prefer not having their
wives around.'

‘You don't think, detective chief
inspector, that all of this is also keeping us away from the killers, who, as you pointed out,
are currently at liberty in Paris?'

‘What,' Maigret
asked the examining magistrate, ‘put us on to them in the first place, sir?'

‘The body in Place de la Concorde,
obviously.'

‘Then why should it not do so again? You
see, I believe that once we have understood, it shouldn't be hard to lay our hands on the
whole gang. But first we have to understand.'

‘So you think they killed the ex-waiter
because he knew too much?'

‘It's likely. I'm trying to
discover how he knew what he knew. When I have the answer, I shall also know what he
knew.'

The commissioner nodded approvingly and smiled.
He could feel the antagonism between the two men. Meanwhile Colombani was also anxious to put in
a word.

‘Maybe the train …?'

He knew the file inside out. Maigret made an
encouraging gesture.

‘What train are you talking about?'
asked Coméliau.

‘Since the most recent murders'
– it was Colombani who replied and Maigret encouraged him with a look – ‘we
have had a small lead which we have deliberately not made public to avoid putting the gang on
their guard. If you would look at the card numbered 5 which is attached to the file … The
murders committed on 19 January took place in the home of the Rivals, unfortunately now
deceased, as are their farm hand and maid. Their property is called Les Nonettes, probably
because it was built on the ruins of an old nunnery. It is located some five kilometres from the
village. There is a railway station in the
village, Goderville, a halt for
stopping trains. It's on the main Paris–Brussels line. I needn't point out
that passengers coming from Paris are not frequent, because it would take hours to complete the
journey by a train which stops at every small station. But on 19 January, at five in the
afternoon, a man got out of the train with a return Paris–Goderville ticket.'

‘Do we have a description of this
man?'

‘Sketchy. Youngish. Well
dressed.'

The examining magistrate was also keen to make a
discovery of his own:

‘Did he have a foreign accent?'

‘He didn't say anything. He passed
through the village on the main road and was not seen again. On the other hand, the following
morning at a few minutes past six, he took the train back to Paris from another out-of-the-way
station, Moucher, twenty-one kilometres to the south. He did not use a taxi. He wasn't
driven anywhere by any of the locals. It's hard to believe he would have spent the night
tramping around just for the fun of it. His way must of necessity have taken him somewhere in
the vicinity of Les Nonettes.'

Maigret had closed his eyes, overcome by a wave
of exhaustion against which he fought with difficulty. He even fell half asleep standing up and
he had let his pipe go out.

‘When this information was passed to
us,' continued Colombani, ‘we went to the Compagnie du Nord and asked for the
ticket. It's their practice for all tickets surrendered at stations to be kept for a
certain period.'

‘But you didn't
recover it?'

‘It wasn't handed in at Gare du Nord.
This means that a traveller either got out on the wrong side on to the track or else that he
lost himself in the crowd of passengers getting off at a suburban station and was able to make
his way out without being seen, which is not difficult.'

‘Is that what you were getting at,
Maigret?'

‘Yes, sir,' replied Maigret.

‘And what conclusion do you draw from
it?'

‘I don't know. Li'l Albert
could have been on the same train. Or maybe he just happened to have been at the
station.'

He shook his head and went on:

‘But I don't think so, otherwise
they'd have started hounding him much sooner.'

‘Which means?'

‘Nothing. Yet he must have had some piece
of tangible evidence in his possession, since the gang went to the trouble of searching his
house from top to bottom after killing him. It's complicated. There's also the fact
that Victor came back to the bar and snooped around.'

‘So it's unlikely they found what
they were looking for?'

‘If they had, they'd hardly have sent
the moron of the gang back to get it. No, I'd swear Victor went there on his own
initiative, without the others knowing. If you want proof, there's the fact that they shot
him in cold blood when they discovered that the police were on his tail and that he would lead
us directly to them. Excuse me, gentlemen. My apologies, commissioner, I'm
exhausted.'

He turned to Colombani.

‘Shall I see you at
five?'

‘If you like.'

He seemed so limp, so weary, so irresolute that
Monsieur Coméliau felt a twinge of guilt and murmured:

‘Even so, you have produced some impressive
results.'

And when Maigret had left the room:

‘He's too old for sleepless nights.
But why does he insist on doing everything himself?'

However he would have been very surprised if he
had seen Maigret, just as he was about to step into a taxi, hesitate over the address and after
a moment say:

‘Quai de Charenton. I'll tell you
where when we're there.'

Victor's visit to the Petit Albert bothered
him. All the way there, he kept picturing him, tall, taking those catlike strides, with Lucas
right behind him.

‘What'll you have, sir?'

‘Anything you like.'

Chevrier had entered fully into the spirit of his
role. His wife must have been a good cook, for there were about twenty customers there.

‘I'm going upstairs. Would you ask
Irma to come up?'

She followed him up the stairs, wiping her hands
on her apron. He looked all round the bedroom, which, with the windows wide opened, now smelled
good and clean.

‘Where did you put all the things that were
lying around?'

He had made an inventory of them with Moers. But
at that stage he had been looking for what the murderers had left behind. Now he was wondering
about something else, something more specific: what had Victor personally come to retrieve?

‘I pushed everything
into the top drawer of the chest.'

Combs, a box containing hair pins, seashells
inscribed with the name of a beach in Normandy, a free giveaway paper-knife, a broken propelling
pencil, the usual oddments which clutter up houses.

‘It's all here?'

‘Even a half-opened packet of cigarettes
and an old, broken pipe. Are we going to be here much longer?'

‘I don't know. Are you getting tired
of being here?'

‘Me, no. But some of the customers get a
bit too fresh, and my husband is beginning to get rattled. It won't be long before he
punches somebody on the nose …'

He was still rummaging through the drawer and
fished out a small German-made harmonica, which had seen a lot of use. To Irma's great
surprise, he slipped it into his pocket.

‘Is that all?' she asked.

‘That's it.'

A few minutes later, from downstairs, he was
phoning Monsieur Loiseau, who was taken aback by his question.

‘Tell me: did Albert play the
harmonica?'

‘Not to my knowledge. He used to sing, but
I never heard him play any instrument.'

Maigret remembered the harmonica which had been
found in Rue du Roi-de-Sicile. The next moment he rang the number of the Lion d'Or.

‘Listen, did Victor play the
harmonica?'

‘Sure he did. He even used to play it in
the street as he walked along.'

‘Was he the only one who played?'

‘Serge Madok did
too.'

‘Did they both have their own
harmonica?'

‘I think so. Yes. I'm certain of it,
because sometimes they used to play duets.'

But when Maigret had searched the room in the
Lion d'Or, there had been only one harmonica.

What simple-minded Victor had come looking for in
Quai de Charenton without telling the others, what ultimately he had died for, was his
harmonica.

What happened that afternoon would be added to the
modest stock of anecdotes which a smiling Madame Maigret would relate at family gatherings.

That Maigret should have got home at two
o'clock and gone to bed without having any lunch was not of itself all that unusual,
although the first thing he always did whenever he got back to the apartment at any hour, night
or day, was to go into the kitchen and lift the lids of the saucepans on the stove. He did say,
however, that he had eaten already. But soon afterwards, while she probed a little deeper as he
was getting undressed, he confessed that he had just helped himself to a slice of ham in the
kitchen of the bar on Quai de Charenton.

She lowered the blinds, made sure her husband did
not need for anything and glided silently out. Before the door had even closed he was in a deep
sleep.

When she had done the washing-up and tidied the
kitchen, she hesitated for some time before going back into their bedroom to fetch her knitting,
which she had forgotten. First, she listened and, hearing regular breathing, turned the knob
carefully and tiptoed back into the room without making any more sound than a nun in a cloister.
It was at that point that, without ceasing to breathe like a man heavily asleep, he said in a
thick voice:

‘Can't believe
it! Two and a half million in five months!'

His eyes were closed, and his face was flushed.
She thought he was talking in his sleep but nevertheless stood stock-still so as not to wake
him.

‘Now where would you start if you wanted to
spend that kind of money?'

She didn't dare reply, convinced that he
was still dreaming. Then, still without moving his eyelids, he started to lose patience.

‘Answer the question, Madame
Maigret!'

‘I have no idea,' she whispered.
‘How much did you say?'

‘Two and a half million. Probably a lot
more. It's the minimum haul they took from the farms, and a sizeable part of it is in gold
coins. Then there are the horses, obviously.'

He turned over heavily. One eye opened briefly
and stared at his wife.

‘The thing is, we can't get away from
horse-racing.'

She knew he was not speaking for her benefit but
for his own. She waited in the hope that he might go back to sleep so that she could withdraw
the way she had come, without her knitting if necessary. He fell silent for some time, and she
rather thought he had gone back to sleep.

‘Listen, Madame Maigret. There's one
small thing I want to know now. Where were there horse-races last Tuesday? Just in the Paris
region, of course. Get on the phone now!'

‘Who do you want me to phone?'

‘Call the Pari-Mutuel. You'll find
their number in the book.'

The phone was in the dining
room, and the flex was too short for it to be brought into the bedroom. Madame Maigret still
felt uneasy when she had to speak into the small metal disk, especially to someone she did not
know.

‘Shall I say I'm phoning on your
behalf?'

‘If you like.'

‘What if they ask who I am?'

‘They won't.'

By now both his eyes were open, and he was wide
awake. She slipped into the next room and left the door open while she phoned. It did not take
long. It was as if the person at the other end was used to answering such questions and
obviously had the racing calendar at his fingertips, for he gave the information without
hesitation. But when Madame Maigret went back into the bedroom to repeat to Maigret what she had
been told, he was fast asleep, with his hands clenched tight and his breathing noisy enough for
it to qualify as snoring.

She didn't like to wake him, decided that
it was better to let him rest. But just in case, she left the communicating door ajar and from
time to time looked at the clock with surprise, for her husband's afternoon naps rarely
lasted very long.

At four o'clock she went into the kitchen
to put the dinner on to cook. At half past, she glanced into the bedroom. Her husband was still
sleeping. He looked as if he was dreaming that he was thinking: his eyebrows were knitted, his
forehead was creased, and there was an odd curl to his lip.

But a little later, when she had sat down again
in the
dining room, at her usual place by the window, she heard a voice say
impatiently:

‘Well, what about this phone
call?'

She scurried in and was surprised to see him
sitting up in bed.

‘Is the number engaged?' he asked in
a deadly serious voice.

This produced a most singular effect on Madame
Maigret. She felt almost frightened, as if her husband were delirious.

‘Oh, I got through all right. That was
three hours ago.'

He stared at her in disbelief.

‘What are you talking about? Look here,
what time is it now?'

‘Quarter to five.'

He was not even aware that he had fallen asleep.
He thought he had closed his eyes for just as long as it took to make a phone call.

‘And where was it?'

‘Vincennes.'

‘What did I tell you?' he
exulted.

He hadn't spoken to anyone, but he had
thought about it so much that it seemed that he had.

‘Ring Rue des Saussaies … 00-90
… Ask to be put through to Colombani's office …'

‘What shall I tell him?'

‘Nothing. I'll speak to him myself
– that is if he's not already on his way.'

Colombani was still at his desk. He was usually
late for meetings. He was very understanding and agreed to
meet Maigret in
his apartment rather than at the Police Judiciaire.

She had, as he asked, made him a cup of strong
coffee, but it had not been enough to wake him up completely. He had missed so much sleep that
his eyelids were still pink and itched. His skin felt too tight. He hadn't had the energy
to get dressed properly and had just put on his trousers, slippers and a dressing gown over his
night shirt, the one with the collar which had small red crosses on it.

They made themselves comfortable in the dining
room. They sat opposite each other with the decanter of calvados between them and, outside, on
the white wall on the other side of the boulevard, in black letters, the names of Lhoste and
Pépin.

They had known each other for long enough not to
stand on ceremony. Colombani, who was short, like most Corsicans, wore lifts on his shoes,
brightly coloured ties and a ring, with a real or maybe imitation diamond, on the third finger
of his left hand. As a result, he was sometimes thought to be one of the criminals he was
looking for rather than the policeman hunting them.

‘I've sent Janvier out to cover the
race-courses,' said Maigret as he smoked his pipe. ‘Where are they racing
today?'

‘Vincennes.'

‘The same as last Tuesday, I'm
wondering if it wasn't at Vincennes that Li'l Albert's adventures started.
Preliminary inquiries have already been made around the race-courses but without appreciable
results. At that stage,
we were only interested in an ex-waiter. Today,
it's different. We now have to ask questions at the various betting windows, and
especially those where the bigger bets are placed, five hundred or a thousand francs, and see if
they have a customer, male, still young, with a foreign accent.'

‘Maybe the course's own security
people have already spotted him?'

‘Well, I don't suppose he goes by
himself. Two and a half million in five months takes some spending.'

‘And it must come to a lot more than
that,' said Colombani. ‘In my report, I only gave figures I was sure of. They are
the amounts the gang definitely got away with. But it's very likely the farmers had other
hiding places whose locations were extracted by torture. I wouldn't be surprised if the
real total was four millions and upwards. What could those lousy scum from Rue du Roi-de-Sicile
have spent it on? Not on clothes. They never went out. They ate and drank at home. Even allowing
for the fact that there are five of them, it would take a good long time for them to eat and
drink their way through even one million francs' worth. And yet their raids had followed
at short intervals.'

‘The leader must have taken the
lion's share.'

‘I'm wondering why the others would
have allowed him to do that.'

There were a lot more questions which Maigret
kept asking himself, so many in fact that there were times when he got sick of thinking and,
passing one hand across his forehead, he would fix his eyes on an arbitrary point, the geranium
in the distant window, for instance. But it
was no good. Even here, in his
own home, he was completely bogged down in this investigation and felt anxious about everything
that was going on at that same moment in Paris and the suburbs. He had not yet arranged for
Maria to be transferred to the infirmary in the Santé prison. But he had made sure that the
afternoon editions of the papers published the name of the hospital to which she had been
taken.

‘I assume you've sent a few
inspectors out there to stand guard?' asked Colombani.

‘Four, in addition to the uniformed men.
The hospital has several exits. Today is visiting day.'

‘Do you think they'll make a
move?'

‘I don't know. But given that
they're all crazy about her, I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them would
try something regardless of the risks. Not to mention the fact that every one of them probably
believes that he's the father. And if they believe that, they'll want to see the kid
and the mother. It's a dangerous game, and the danger comes not so much from me but from
the others.'

‘I don't get you.'

‘They killed Victor Poliensky, didn't
they? Why? Because it was very likely he'd lead us to them. If any one of them looks as if
he's about to fall into our hands, I'd be amazed if the others would let him go on
living.'

Maigret drew on his pipe, looking pensive.
Colombani lit a gold-tipped cigarette and said:

‘The first thing they'll try to do is
contact their leader, especially if their funds are running low.'

Maigret looked at him mildly
but then his eyes hardened. He got to his feet, thumped the table with one hand and cried:

‘Oaf! What a fool I am! That never occurred
to me!'

‘But you don't know where he lives
…'

‘That's just the point! I'd bet
they don't know either. The man who set up the whole operation and gives the villains
their orders is certain to have covered his back. What was it the hotel-keeper told me? That
he would come to Rue du Roi-de-Sicile and give them instructions before they went out on
every job
? Got it? Has the penny started to drop?'

‘Not quite.'

‘What do we know about him, or what can we
deduce? We're looking for him at race meetings. Do you think they are more stupid than us?
You're quite right! Even as we speak they are unquestionably trying to track him down. To
ask him for money, perhaps, but in any case to bring him up to date and ask for his advice or
for new instructions. I bet none of them slept in a bed last night. Where would you expect them
to go?'

‘To Vincennes?'

‘It's more than likely. If they
haven't split up, they'll have sent at least one of their number. But if they have
separated without agreeing what each should do, it wouldn't surprise me if all three of
them have gone there. We had a glorious opportunity to round up the lot of them without even
knowing who they are! It's easy to spot men of that type in a crowd. And to think that
Janvier is there, and I haven't told him how to act accordingly! If we had thirty
inspectors in the paddock and
public enclosures we'd collar the lot
of them! What's the time now?'

‘It's too late! The sixth race
finished half an hour ago.'

‘Dammit! You think you've covered
everything! When I went to bed at two, I was convinced that I had done all I could do. I had men
studying payslips from Citroën and searching the Javel district. Laennec Hospital is
surrounded. Every part of Paris where men like the Czechs might go to ground is being combed.
Down-and-outs and tramps are being formally questioned. Hotels are being checked. Moers, in his
lab on the top floor, is analysing every last hair we found in the rooms in Rue du
Roi-de-Sicile.

‘Meanwhile, our gallant band have probably
had an opportunity to exchange a few words with their boss.'

It seemed that Colombani was also a keen
race-goer, for he wasn't far wrong. The phone rang. It was Janvier.

‘I'm still at Vincennes, sir. I tried
to get you at HQ.'

‘Is the last race over?'

‘Finished half an hour ago. I've
stayed on with the cashiers who man the betting windows. It was hard trying to get anything out
of them while the racing was going on, because they work under such pressure. It beats me how
they don't make mistakes. I questioned them about the bets, as you'll remember. A
man who sits at a thousand-franc window was immediately struck by my question. He's
travelled around central Europe and is able to tell different languages from each other.
“A Czech?” he said. “I've got one who persistently bets the limit,
almost always puts it on outsiders. For a while, I thought he must be from the
embassy.”'