Maigret's Dead Man (5 page)

Everything seemed to suggest that he had gone
home, because he had changed his jacket.

He had eaten either at home or in a restaurant.
And he had been left alone to eat his dinner because he had had enough time to consume soup,
fish pie and an apple. Everything up to and including the apple suggested peace and calm.

So why had he not spoken for two hours?

He had not hesitated to pester Maigret several
times and urge him to put the whole police force on high alert.

Then suddenly, after four o'clock, it was
as if he had changed his mind, as though he had wanted to leave the police out of the reckoning
altogether.

It nettled Maigret. That's not the right
word perhaps, but it felt a little as if his dead man had been unfaithful to him.

‘Got anything, Janvier?'

The inspectors' room was blue with tobacco
smoke. Four glassy-eyed men were glued to phones.

‘Fish pie's not on the menu,
sir!' joked Janvier with a sigh, ‘and yet we've covered the primary area.
I'm now doing the Faubourg Montmartre, and Torrence has got as far as Place Clichy
…'

Maigret also got on the phone
in his office, but he was calling a small cheap hotel in Rue Lepic.

‘Yes, by taxi … At once
…'

Someone had left photos of the dead man on his
desk taken during the night. There were also copies of the morning papers, reports and a note
from the examining magistrate, Coméliau.

‘Is that you, Madame Maigret? … Not
too bad … I don't know yet if I'll be home for lunch … No, I
haven't had time to get a shave … I'll try and get to a barber's …
Yes, I've eaten …'

He duly went out to find a barber's, but
not before telling old Joseph, the office clerk, to ask a visitor who would be coming to see him
to wait. He did not have far to go, just across the bridge. He walked into the first
gentleman's hairdresser's he came to on Boulevard Saint-Michel and stared grimly at
the large, dark-ringed eyes which looked back at him from the mirror.

He knew that when he left he would not be able to
resist the temptation of going for a drink in the Caves du Beaujolais. First, because he was
genuinely fond of the atmosphere in that type of small bar which is generally very quiet and the
landlord will pass the time of day with you. He also liked Beaujolais, especially when it is
served, as it was there, in those small stoneware mugs. But there was another reason: he was
following in the steps of his dead man.

‘Reading the paper this morning, inspector,
it gave me quite a shock. I didn't see much of him, you know. But when I think about it,
he seemed decent enough. I can see
him now, waving his arms about as he came
in. He was on edge, that's for sure, but he looked a straightforward sort. Know what? I
bet he'd have been good fun in other circumstances. You'll laugh, but the more I
think about it, the more I think he was a joker. He reminded me of somebody. I been trying to
remember who for hours.'

‘Somebody that looked like him?'

‘Yes … No … It's more
complicated … He reminds me of something, and I can't for the life of me remember
what … Has he been identified yet?'

That too was strange, though not altogether
unusual at this stage. The morning editions had been out for some time. Of course, the face was
disfigured but not to the point of being unrecognizable to anyone who was close to him, a wife
or mother, for example.

The man had lived somewhere, even if it was only
a hotel. He hadn't been home all night.

Logically, in the last few hours, someone must
have either recognized his photo or reported his disappearance.

But Maigret was not counting on anything. He
recrossed the bridge with a pleasant, slightly harsh aftertaste of Beaujolais in his mouth. He
climbed the shabby staircase, where eyes watched him with apprehensive respect.

He glanced through the windows of the waiting
room. His man was there, on his feet, perfectly at home, smoking a cigarette.

‘This way …'

He showed him into his office, motioned him to a
chair and took off his hat and coat without ceasing to observe his visitor out of the corner of
his eye. From where
he was, his visitor had a clear view of the photos of
the dead man.

‘Well, Fred?'

‘I'm all yours, inspector. I
wasn't expecting you to phone. I don't see how …'

He was thin, very pale, and smartly dressed in a
vaguely effeminate way. From time to time, a tautening of the nostrils identified a drug
addict.

‘You don't know him?'

‘I knew what this is about when I got here,
the minute I saw the photos … Looks like someone's beat him up!'

‘You never saw him before?'

It was clear that Fred was trying his level best
to do what was expected of him as a police informer. He looked closely at the photos and even
took them to the window so that he could see them in full light.

‘No … And yet …'

While Maigret waited, he refilled the stove.

‘It's no go! I'd swear I never
saw him before. But he puts me in mind of something. I can't put my finger on it …
But at any rate he's not part of any mob. Even if he was a new recruit I'd have come
across him already.'

‘What does he remind you of?'

‘That's exactly what I'm trying
to remember … Do you know what line of work he was in?'

‘No.'

‘Nor what part of Paris he lived
in?'

‘No.'

‘He's not from out of town either,
you can tell straight off.'

‘I agree.'

Maigret had had ample opportunity to hear for
himself that the man had a marked Parisian accent, the lower-class accent heard everywhere, on
the Métro, in the bars on the outskirts and also in the stands of the Vélodrome
d'Hiver.

Actually … He had the beginnings of an idea
… He would test it later …

‘I don't suppose you know a woman
named Nine either?'

‘Wait a sec … There's a Nine in
Marseilles, plays second fiddle to the madam of a brothel in Rue Saint-Ferréol.'

‘It's not her, I know that one
… She's at least fifty years old …'

Fred stared at the photo of the man who was
probably about thirty and muttered:

‘It doesn't always follow, you
know!'

‘Take one of these photos. Try to remember.
Show it round …'

‘You can count on me. I hope I'll
have a lead for you within a couple of days. Not about your stiff, but about a big-time drugs
dealer. For now I only know him as Monsieur Jean. I've never seen him. All I know is that
he's behind a big gang of small-fry dealers. I get my stuff from them regularly. It costs
me. When you've got some cash to spare …'

Next door, Janvier was still on the trail of fish
pie.

‘You're right, sir. Everyone I talk
to says they only make Provençal fish pie on Fridays, and even then, not that often. During
Holy Week, sometimes on a Wednesday, but Easter is still a long way off.'

‘Leave that to
Torrence. Is there anything on at the Vél' d'Hiv' this
afternoon?'

‘Wait a minute, I'll look in the
paper.'

There were motor-paced races.

‘Take a photo along with you. Talk to the
ticket offices, orange sellers and peanut vendors. Tour all the bars in the area. Then hang
about in the cafés around Porte Dauphine.'

‘You think he was a sporting
type?'

Maigret had no idea. He had a feeling too, just
like the others, like the landlord of the Caves du Beaujolais, like the informer Fred, but it
was unfocused, blurred.

He could not picture his dead man working in an
office or as a shop assistant. Fred had been definite that he was not part of the criminal
underworld.

On the other hand, he was completely at home in
small working-class bars.

He had a wife called Nine. And Maigret had met
her. In what capacity? Would the man have made a point of mentioning it if the inspector had
encountered her as someone he had investigated?

‘Come here, Dubonnet. I want you to go down
to Vice. Ask to see the list of girls who've been registered over the last few years. Note
down the addresses of all the ones named Nine. Then go and see them. Is that clear?'

Dubonnet was a young officer, fresh out of
college, a little stiff, always very well turned out, exquisitely courteous to all and sundry.
It was perhaps Maigret's sense of irony which had made him choose him for the job.

He sent another inspector to make inquiries in
all the small bars around Châtelet, Place des Vosges and Bastille.

Meanwhile, Coméliau, the
examining magistrate, who was leading the investigation from his office, waited impatiently for
Maigret. He did not understand why he had not already contacted him.

‘What about the yellow
Citroëns?'

‘Ériau is looking after it.'

All that was routine. But even if it served no
purpose, it had to be done. On all the roads in France, policemen and uniformed officers were
pulling over all drivers of yellow Citroëns.

Someone also had to be sent to the shop on
Boulevard Sébastopol where the dead man's jacket had been bought, and also to another
establishment on Boulevard Saint-Martin where the raincoat had been sold.

While that was proceeding, fifty other cases were
demanding the attention of the inspectors. They came in, went out, phoned, typed up reports
… People were kept waiting in the corridors. There was a deal of toing and froing between
the Hotel Agency and Vice Squad and between Vice and Records.

Moers' voice over the phone:

‘Maybe something, sir … A small
detail, which is probably not important. I've found so little that I'll bring it to
your attention anyway. I took a hair sample, as usual. My analysis revealed traces of
lipstick.'

It was almost laughable, but neither of them was
laughing. A woman had kissed Maigret's dead man on the head, a woman wearing lipstick.

‘I can add that it's a cheap make,
and that the woman is probably a brunette, because it's a dark shade of red
…'

Was it the previous evening
that a woman had kissed the man with no name? Did it happen at his place when he had gone home
to change his jacket?

And since he had actually changed, it was because
he wasn't intending to go out again. A man who goes home for just an hour does not bother
to put on a different jacket.

In which case, then, he had been called away
unexpectedly … But was it likely that, hunted as he was and sufficiently panicky to go
running around Paris waving his arms about and phoning the police all day, he would have gone
out after dark?

A woman kissed his hair. Or else she had bent
over him, leaning her face against his cheek. Either way it was a tender gesture.

Maigret sighed, filled his pipe again and looked
at the clock. It was a few minutes after midday.

Almost exactly the same time as when, on the
previous day, the man had walked across Place des Vosges while the fountains played.

Maigret went through the small communicating door
which connected the Police Judiciaire with the Palais de Justice. Lawyers' robes billowed
in the corridors like great black birds.

‘Let's go and see the old
baboon!' sighed Maigret who had never been able to stand Coméliau.

He knew in advance that the examining magistrate
would greet him with some icy comment which in his eyes would be the most stinging rebuke he
could think of:

‘Ah! I have been waiting for you, Detective
Chief Inspector …'

Though he would have been
quite capable of saying, like Louis XIV:

‘I almost had to wait …'

Maigret could not have cared less.

He had been living with his dead man since half
past two that morning.

‘I am delighted, Maigret, to have got you on
the phone at long last.'

‘Believe me, sir, the pleasure is all
mine.'

Madame Maigret looked up sharply. She always felt
uneasy when her husband used that quiet, bland voice. When he used it on her she always cried
because she never knew what was coming next.

‘I've called you at your office five
times.'

‘And I wasn't there!' he
sighed, audibly dismayed.

She raised a finger, warning him to be careful
and remember that he was speaking to an examining magistrate who moreover had a brother-in-law
who had been a government minister two or three times.

‘I've only just been told that you
were unwell.'

‘A little off colour, sir. People always
exaggerate these things. A heavy cold. And I wonder now if it really was as heavy as all
that!'

It was perhaps the fact that he was at home, in
his pyjamas and wearing his velvety dressing gown, his feet encased in slippers and comfortably
settled in his armchair, that put him in such a playful mood.

‘What surprises me is that you
haven't let me know who is replacing you.'

‘Replacing me where?'

Coméliau's voice
was curt, cool, deliberately impersonal, whereas Maigret's became increasingly
amenable.

‘I'm talking about the Place de la
Concorde murder. I assume you haven't forgotten it?'

‘It is constantly in my thoughts. Why, only
this minute I was telling my wife …'

But she made even more emphatic signs ordering
him not to involve her in the affair. Their apartment was small and cosy. The furniture in the
dining room was all dark oak and dated from the time of Maigret's marriage. Opposite,
through the net curtains, could be seen in large black letters on a white wall: ‘Lhoste
& Pépin – Makers of Precision Tools'
.

Every morning and every evening for thirty years,
Maigret had been seeing those words, and under them the huge warehouse doors and two or three
lorries branded with the same names eternally parked on either side of them, and he was still
not sick of the view.

On the contrary! He liked it. He would let his
eyes linger on it, almost lovingly. Then without fail he would raise them to the rear of a
distant house, where washing was put out of the windows to dry and a red geranium would appear
in one of them as soon as the weather turned warm enough.

It was probably not the same geranium. He would
have sworn, however, that the same flower pot had been there, as he had, for the last thirty
years. And during all that time not once had Maigret ever seen anyone lean on the sill and look
out or water the plant. Obviously someone lived in that room, but his or her hours could never
have coincided with his.

‘Are you sure,
Monsieur Maigret, that in your absence your subordinates are conducting the inquiry with the
necessary zeal?'

‘I believe so, Monsieur Coméliau.
Indeed, I am certain of it. You cannot imagine how helpful it is, when directing an
investigation of this sort, to be in a quiet, overheated room, sitting in an armchair in
one's own home, far from all the usual distractions, with nothing but a phone within easy
reach and a pot of herbal tea to hand. I will let you in on a little secret: I'm
wondering, if this case had not cropped up, if I would have been feeling unwell at all.
Obviously I wouldn't be ill since it was in Place de la Concorde on the night the body was
discovered that I caught cold. Or perhaps it was early that morning, while Dr Paul and I walked
along the bank of the river at first light, after the autopsy. But that isn't what I mean.
If it hadn't been for this investigation, my cold would have been just a cold and I would
have ignored it. Do you see what I'm getting at?'

In his office, Coméliau's face had
probably turned yellow, possibly green, and poor Madame Maigret, who had such respect for rank
and hierarchies of all kinds, did not know where to put herself.

‘So let's just say that, that I have
much more peace here, at home, with my wife looking after me, to think about the case and manage
it. I'm not disturbed by anyone, or hardly anyone …'

‘Maigret!' chided his wife.

‘Sh!'

Coméliau was speaking.

‘You think it usual
that after three days the man still has not been identified? His picture has been in all the
papers. I understand from what you told me that there was a wife.'

‘Indeed so, he told me himself.'

‘Please let me speak. He had a wife and
probably friends. He also had neighbours, a landlord and so on and so forth. People were used to
seeing him walking along the street at certain times. But no one so far has come forward to
identify him or report his disappearance. Still, not everyone knows how to get to Boulevard
Richard-Lenoir.'

Poor Boulevard Richard-Lenoir! Why on earth
should it have such a bad name? Obviously, it led into Place de la Bastille. Equally obviously
it was flanked on both sides by narrow, teeming streets. And the area was full of small
workshops and warehouses. But the Boulevard itself was wide and even had a grassy central
reservation. Admittedly, the grass grew above the Métro line, and here and there air-vents
exhaled warm fumes which smelled of disinfectant, and every couple of minutes when trains
trundled by underneath the houses shook in the most curious way. But people were used to it.
Many times over the last thirty years, friends and colleagues had found other apartments for him
in what they called more ‘vibrant' parts of town. He would go to see them and
mutter:

‘It's very nice, I see that
…'

‘But what about the view,
Maigret?'

‘Yes …'

‘The rooms are big and
airy …'

‘Agreed … It's perfect …
I'd really like living here … But …'

He would take his time before saying with a sigh
and a regretful shake of his head:

‘… I'd have to move!'

It was just hard luck on people who didn't
care for Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. And too bad for Coméliau.

‘Tell me, sir, did you ever happen to push
a dried pea up your nose?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘A dried pea. I remember we used to play at
doing it when I was a boy. Try it. Then look at yourself in a mirror. You'll be surprised
by the result. I'd bet that with a dried pea in one of your nostrils you could walk past
people who see you every day without them recognizing you. Nothing alters the cast of a face
more. And those who are most accustomed to seeing us are the ones who are the most disconcerted
by the smallest change.

‘But as you are aware, our man's face
was rearranged much more severely than by a pea up his nose.

‘And there's something else.
It's hard for people to imagine that their next-door neighbour, someone they work with in
the office or the waiter who serves them every lunchtime can suddenly become different from what
they always are and turn, for example, into a murderer or a corpse. People learn about crime
through newspapers and come to think that such things happen in another world, another part of
the wood entirely. Not on
their
street. Not in
their
apartment
block.'

‘So, broadly speaking,
you don't think it unusual that no one has identified him yet?'

‘I am not unduly surprised. I remember the
case of a woman who had drowned, and with her it took six months. And that was in the days of
the old morgue before refrigeration came in, and the bodies just had a trickle of cold water
running over them from a tap!'

Madame Maigret sighed, abandoning all thought of
trying to shut him up.

‘So in a word you are quite happy with the
way things stand. A man is killed, and after three days not only is there no trace of the
murderer but we don't know anything about the victim!'

‘I know lots of small things about him,
sir.'

‘So small, it seems, that they aren't
deemed worthy of being passed on to me, even though I am in charge of this
investigation.'

‘All right, here's an example. The
man was a smart dresser. Though his taste was dubious, he gave much thought to his appearance,
as we can tell by his socks and tie. Also, with grey trousers and a gaberdine raincoat he wore
black kid shoes and expensively fine socks.'

‘Really? How interesting.'

‘Very interesting, especially since he was
also wearing a white shirt. Now wouldn't you have thought that a man who liked mauve socks
and floral ties would have preferred a coloured shirt, or at least one with stripes or a small
pattern? Walk into any bar like the ones he led us to, where he seemed very much at home, and
you won't see many plain white shirts.'

‘What's your
point?'

‘Give me a moment. In at least two of those
bars – Torrence went back and asked – he ordered a Suze and lemon, as it seems he
always did.'

‘So we know what kind of aperitif he
liked!'

‘Have you ever drunk Suze, sir? Gentian
bitters? It has an astringent taste and is not very alcoholic. It's not the kind of
aperitif that's served just anywhere. I also have noticed that people who order Suze are
not often the ones who go to cafés for the lift you get from a pre-dinner drink but men who
patronize such establishments for professional reasons, like commercial travellers who are
obliged to accept lots of free drinks.'

‘So you deduce from this that the dead man
was a commercial traveller?'

‘No.'

‘What, then?'

‘Hear me out. Five or six people saw him
and we have their statements. None of them could give us a detailed description. Most of them
speak of a small-made, ordinary man who waved his arms about. I was forgetting one detail which
Moers came up with this morning. He is very conscientious, never satisfied with his work. He
goes back and checks without being asked to. Well, he's discovered that the dead man
walked like a duck.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Like a duck! With his feet pointing out,
if you prefer.'

He gestured to Madame Maigret, indicating that
she should fill his pipe. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, using his hands to stop
her packing the bowl too tightly.

‘I was telling you
about the various descriptions we have of him. They are vague. Even so, two out of the five had
the same impression. “I'm not sure,” said the owner of the Caves du
Beaujolais. “I can't say exactly … But he reminds me of something … But
what?” Now he wasn't a film actor. He wasn't even an extra. An inspector asked
around all the studios. Nor was he a politician or a magistrate …'

‘Maigret!' cried his wife.

Still talking, he lit his pipe, punctuating his
flow with pulls on his pipe.

‘Ask yourself, sir, what profession matches
up with all these details.'

‘I don't care for
charades.'

‘When a man is forced to keep to his room,
you know, he has plenty of time for reflection. But I'm forgetting the most important
thing. Of course, we looked at various spheres of activity. Cycle races and football matches
drew blanks. I had all PMU licensees questioned …'

‘All what?'

‘The Pari-Mutuel-Urbain …
You've seen cafés where you can put a bet on a horse without having to go to the
races. I don't know why, but I saw my man as the sort who'd hang around PMU bars.
But that didn't turn up anything either …'

He had the patience of an angel. It was as if he
relished spinning this phone call out for as long as he could.

‘On the other hand, Lucas had more luck at
the races. It took him some time. We're not talking about a formal identification. The
disfigurement of the face remains a
problem. And don't forget either
that people aren't used to seeing dead bodies, only living people, plus the fact that when
a man becomes a corpse he changes his appearance greatly … Still, on race tracks, a few
people remember him … He wasn't a habitué of the paddock but of the public
enclosures. According to one tipster, he was something of a regular.'

‘But all this has still not been enough to
reveal his identity?'

‘No. But this plus the rest, everything
I've told you, allows me to say almost for sure that he was in La Limonade
…'

‘
La Limonade?
'

‘It's the usual term, sir. It covers
waiters, bottle-washers, bartenders and even some café owners. It's the word used in
the trade for everyone who works in the drinks industry but excludes restaurants. Now all
waiters in bars are the same. I don't mean that they all look exactly the same, but
there's a family likeness. How often does it happen that you have the feeling that you
recognize a waiter you've never actually seen before?