Maigret's Dead Man (19 page)

Maigret smoked, taking shallow pulls at his pipe.
He could feel Colombani's shoulder next to his. He was sitting by the door next to the
kerb.

They remained like this for forty-five minutes.
Taxis
passed infrequently. At a few houses further along the street,
residents returned home. Eventually a cab pulled up outside the apartment building, and a slim
young man sprang on to the pavement, turned and leaned back inside to help his companion climb
out.

Maigret simply said: ‘Yes!'

He calculated his moves carefully. For some time
his door had been slightly open, and he had kept a firm hold on the handle. With an agility no
one would have expected of him, he rushed forwards and leaped on the man just as, leaning into
the taxi to look at the meter, he was reaching into the pocket of his dinner-jacket for his
wallet.

The young woman screamed. Maigret grabbed the man
by the shoulders from behind, and his weight propelled him forwards so that they both fell on to
the pavement. Maigret, who had been struck on the chin by the man's head, made a grab for
Bronsky's hands to prevent him from going for his revolver. Colombani was already at his
side and, cool and calm, stamped a heel into the Czech's face.

Francine Latour, still screaming for help,
reached the front door of the building and started ringing the bell wildly. The two inspectors
arrived at a run, and the struggle lasted for a few minutes more. Maigret was the last to get to
his feet, as he had been underneath.

‘Anyone injured?'

In the taxi's sidelights, blood could be
seen on Maigret's hand. He looked around him then realized it had come from
Bronsky's nose, which was bleeding profusely. His hands were pinned behind his back by
handcuffs and this
made him bend slightly forwards. There was a fierce
expression on his face.

‘You bastards!' he snarled.

When an inspector made as if to pay back the
insult with a kick to his shins, Maigret said, as he delved into his pocket for his pipe:

‘Let him get the poison off his chest.
It's pretty much the only freedom he'll have from now on.'

They almost forgot Janvier and his colleague
upstairs in the apartment, where, slavishly carrying out their orders, they would probably have
stayed until morning.

He was reporting to the commissioner of the Police
Judiciaire first, which would not have exactly pleased Coméliau.

‘First-rate result, Maigret. Now do me the
pleasure of going home to bed. We'll take care of the details in the morning. Are we going
to call in both of those stationmasters?'

From Goderville and Moucher, who would have to
formally identify the man they had seen, one as he got off the train on 19 January, and the
other as he got on a few hours later.

‘Colombani's looking after it.
They're on the way.'

Jean Bronsky was there with them, on a chair, in
the office. Never had there been quite so many beers and sandwiches on the table. What surprised
the Czech most was that they weren't bothering to question him.

Francine Latour was also present. She had
absolutely insisted on coming because she was totally and utterly convinced that the police were
making a great big mistake. So, just as an adult gives a child a book with pictures in to keep
it quiet, Maigret had handed her Bronsky's file, which she was now reading, not without
giving her lover horrified looks from time to time.

‘What will you do now?' asked
Colombani.

‘Phone the examining
magistrate and then I'm going home to bed.'

‘Want me to drop you?'

‘No thanks. Don't bother. It would
only delay you.'

Maigret was up to his tricks again, and Colombani
knew it. In a firm voice he gave the taxi-driver the address, Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. But a
few moments later he tapped on the glass partition between the back and the front seats:

‘Drive along the Seine and make for
Corbeil.'

It was thus that he saw the new day break. He
made out the first anglers as they took up their positions on the banks of the river, from which
a faint mist rose. He saw the first barges blocking the approaches to the locks and the smoke
that was beginning to drift up from the houses into a mother-of-pearl sky.

‘You'll come to an inn somewhere a
little way upstream,' he said after they had passed Corbeil.

They found it. Its well-shaded terrace looked out
on to the Seine, and the inn itself was surrounded by leafy alcoves where people came in droves
on Sundays. The proprietor, a man with a long red moustache, was emptying a boat and fishing
nets were spread over the floating landing-stage.

After the kind of night he had just had, it was a
pleasure to walk through the dewy grass and breathe in the scent of the earth, the smell of logs
burning in a hearth and see the maid, her hair not yet done, toing and froing in the
kitchen.

‘Is there any coffee?'

‘In a few minutes, though really we
aren't open.'

‘Does your paying
guest usually come down early?'

‘I've been hearing her moving around
her room for some time. Listen.'

And indeed they both could hear the sound of
footsteps coming from above the ceiling with its stout, exposed beams.

‘It's her coffee that I'm just
making.'

‘Lay the table for two.'

‘Are you a friend of hers?'

‘I should say so. I'd be surprised if
I wasn't.'

And a friend he proved to be. It happened very
simply. When he introduced himself and gave his rank, she was briefly frightened. But he spoke
in a kindly voice:

‘Would you mind if I had my breakfast with
you?'

Two places were set on a table by the window:
solid earthenware plates on a red-chequered cloth. The coffee steamed in bowls. The butter had a
taste of hazelnuts to it.

She had a cast in her eye, of course, a heavy,
terrible cast, and she knew it. When he looked straight at her, she was discomforted, felt
ashamed and explained:

‘When I was seventeen, my mother made me
have an operation because my left eye was turning inwards. After the operation, it looked
outwards. The surgeon suggested redoing it, free of charge. But I said no.'

Oddly enough, after a couple of minutes, it was
hardly noticeable. It was even possible to think she was almost pretty.

‘Poor Albert! If you'd only known
him! Such a cheerful, kindly man, always eager to please other people.'

‘He was your cousin,
wasn't he?'

‘A very distant cousin.'

Her accent too had a charm of its own. The
overriding impression she gave was that she felt an immense need for kindness. It was not an
appeal for kindness to be shown her, but a need to spread kindness all around her.

‘I was nearly thirty. Both my parents were
dead. I was on the shelf. They didn't leave me much, and I had never worked. I came to
Paris because I was unhappy living all by myself in our big house. I hardly knew Albert. I had
only heard about him. I went to see him.'

Of course she did. And he understood. Albert was
alone too. She had probably made a great fuss of him, and he wasn't used to it.

‘If you knew how much I loved him! Of
course I never expected that he would love me too. I knew that could never be. But he made me
believe that he did. And I pretended I did believe him, just to please him. We were happy,
inspector. I'm sure he was happy. He had no reason not to be, did he? And we'd just
celebrated our wedding anniversary. I don't know what happened that day at the races. He
left me in the stand every time he went off to place a bet. Once when he came back he seemed to
have something on his mind and from then on he began looking all around him, as if he was
watching out for somebody. He insisted that we came home in a taxi and he kept turning round.
When we got to our place, he told the driver: “Keep going!”, though why, I
don't know. So on we went as far as Place de la Bastille. There he got out. He said:
“Go home by yourself. I'll be there in an hour or two.” It was
because he was being followed. He didn't come home that night. He
phoned to say he'd be back the next morning. The following day he phoned twice
…'

‘That was Wednesday?'

‘That's right. The second time it was
to say I wasn't to stay in and wait for him but to go to the cinema. I didn't want
to, but he insisted. He almost got angry with me. So I went. Have you arrested them?'

‘All except one, and it won't be long
before we get him. He's on his own now, and I don't think he's dangerous,
especially since we know who he is and what he looks like.'

Maigret was unaware of how true his words were.
At that very moment, a member of the Vice Squad was arresting Serge Madok in a licensed brothel
on Boulevard de La Chapelle – actually, an unspeakably filthy hole frequented mainly by
Arabs – where he had been holed up since the previous evening and had stubbornly refused
to leave.

He offered no resistance. He was more or less
dead to the world, being helplessly drunk. He had to be carried out to the police van.

‘What will you do now?' Maigret asked
gently as he filled his pipe.

‘I don't know. I expect I'll go
back home, to where I came from. I can't run a restaurant on my own. Now I have
nobody.'

She repeated that last word and looked around her
as if she were looking for someone to be kind to.

‘I don't know what I'm going to
do with my life.'

‘Ever thought of adopting?'

She looked up, at first in
disbelief and then she smiled.

‘Do you think I might … that
they'd let me have a … that …?'

The idea was taking root in her mind and in her
heart so quickly that Maigret was frightened. It was not exactly that he had spoken without
thinking, rather all he had really wanted to do was discover how the land lay. It was just a
thought he had had on the way in the taxi, one of those fanciful, bold thoughts which seem like
good ideas when we are half asleep or utterly exhausted, but in the cold light of day look quite
mad.

‘We'll discuss it some other time.
Because I shall see you again, if you wish … In any case, I have some financial matters to
settle with you, because we took the liberty of opening your restaurant …'

‘Do you know of a child who
…'

‘Well now, there is one, actually, who in a
few weeks or months from now might well have no mother.'

She flushed bright red, but he was left red-faced
too: he was kicking himself for being so stupid as to raise the issue.

‘A baby, is it?' she stammered.

‘Yes, a very small one.'

‘He'll be helpless, then.'

‘Quite helpless.'

‘And he won't necessarily be like
…'

‘You must excuse me, now. It's time I
was getting back to Paris.'

‘I'll think about it.'

‘Don't think about it too much.
I'm cross with myself
for having spoken to you about it.'

‘No, you did right. Could I see him? Tell
me, would they let me?'

‘May I ask you one more question? Albert
told me over the phone that you knew me. I don't remember ever having seen you
before.'

‘But I saw you once, a long time ago, when
I was just twenty. My mother was still alive and we were on holiday in Dieppe.'

‘The Hôtel Beauséjour!' he
exclaimed.

He had stayed there for a fortnight with Madame
Maigret.

‘All the people staying at the hotel talked
about you and stared when you weren't looking …'

He felt quite odd in the taxi, which was now
taking him back to Paris through country flooded with bright sunshine. New buds were beginning
to appear in the hedges.

‘It might be rather pleasant to get away
for a holiday,' he thought, perhaps because of the memories of Dieppe which Nine had just
revived.

He knew that he would do nothing of the sort, for
this was something which happened to him from time to time. It was like a cold which he could
cure by treating it with large amounts of work.

The suburbs … The bridge at Joinville
…

‘Go along Quai de Charenton.'

The bar was open. Chevrier looked rather
embarrassed.

‘I'm glad you came, sir. They phoned
to say it's all over. My wife is wondering if she has to go and do her
shopping.'

‘As she
pleases.'

‘But there's no point now?'

‘None at all.'

‘They also asked me if I'd seen you.
It seems they've been phoning you at home and everywhere else. Do you want to call
HQ?'

Maigret paused. This time he really was exhausted
and wanted only one thing: his own bed and the sensual pleasure of sliding into a bottomless,
dreamless sleep.

‘I bet I shall sleep for a solid
twenty-four hours.'

But, alas, it would not happen! Someone would
disturb him before he managed it. They had got into too much of a habit at Quai des
Orfèvres – and he had let it happen – of saying at the first sign of trouble:
‘Ring Maigret!'

‘Can I get you anything, sir?'

‘A calvados, since you insist.'

All this had started with calvados. Might as well
finish it on the same note.

‘Hello? Who's that?'

It was Bodin. Maigret had forgotten Bodin. He had
probably also forgotten a number of others who would still be standing guard pointlessly at
different locations across Paris.

‘I've got the letter.'

‘What letter?'

‘The one from the poste
restante.'

‘Oh yes! Good.'

Poor Bodin. His great discovery wasn't
making much of an impact.

‘Would you like me to open it and tell you
what's in the envelope?'

‘If you
like.'

‘Wait a minute … There … No
written message, just a railway ticket.'

‘Right.'

‘You knew?'

‘I had my suspicions. It's a
first-class return from Goderville to Paris.'

‘Correct. We've got some
stationmasters waiting for you here.'

‘That's Colombani's
department.'

Maigret sipped his calvados and smiled a faint
smile. Another side of the character of Li'l Albert, whom he had not known when he was
alive but had in a sense rebuilt piece by piece.

Like a certain breed of race-goers, Albert
couldn't help keeping his eyes down, on the ground, which was littered with losing Mutuel
betting slips. Among them a man may sometimes find a winning slip which has been thrown away by
mistake.

It wasn't a winning slip he had found that
morning but a train ticket.

If such had not been his habit … If he
hadn't seen the man from whose pocket it had dropped … If the name Goderville had
not instantly made him think of the massacres perpetrated by the Picardy gang … If his
feelings had not been written on his face …

‘Poor Albert!' sighed Maigret.

… he would still be alive. On the other
hand, a few more old farmers and their wives would have passed from life into death, but not
before they had had the soles of
their feet scorched by Maria.