Maigret's Holiday (24 page)

‘Tell me, waiter …'

There were six waiters plus the woman at the
till and the man who owned the place. He questioned them all. No one had seen his man.
So he took a seat in a corner by the door, ordered a beer and waited, smoking his pipe.
Half an hour later, sandwiches notwithstanding, he ordered a plate of sauerkraut and
frankfurters. He watched people pass by on the pavement. Every time a raincoat appeared,
he gave a start, and there were many of them, for the shower now falling was the third
since that morning. The rain was translucent, transparent, the plain, innocent kind of
rain which does not prevent the sun from shining.

‘Hello? … Police Judiciaire?
… It's Maigret. Has Janvier got back? Let me speak to him … Is that
you, Janvier? … Jump in a taxi and meet me in the Canon de la Bastille …
You're right, today's the day for bars. I'll wait for you here …
No, nothing new …'

Too bad if the man with the windmill arms
was a hoaxer. Maigret left his inspector to keep an eye on the Canon de la Bastille and
used the taxi to go back to his office.

The chances that Nine's husband had
been murdered since half past twelve were slim, because he did not seem keen to venture
down backstreets. On the contrary, he chose busy parts of town and main thoroughfares.
Even so, Maigret contacted the emergency services, which kept constantly up to date
about any trouble that happened in Paris.

‘If you are informed that a man in a
raincoat has had an accident or been involved in an argument or whatever, give me a ring
…'

He also gave instructions for one of the
Police Judiciaire's squad cars to be kept available for him in the courtyard of
Quai des Orfèvres. This was perhaps excessive, but he was merely stacking the odds
on his side.

He talked to people who came to his office,
smoked many pipes and stoked his stove from time to time, while keeping his window open,
and occasionally aimed a reproachful look at his phone, which remained resolutely
silent.

‘You used to know my wife
…' the man had said.

He tried idly to remember a Nine. He must
have met many of that name. He had known one, a few years before, who ran a small bar in
Cannes, but she had been an old lady even then and was probably dead by now. There was
also a niece of his wife's whose name was Aline, but everybody called her
Nine.

‘Hello? Detective Chief Inspector
Maigret?'

It was four o'clock. It was still
broad daylight but the inspector had switched on his desk lamp with the green shade.

‘I am the postmaster at 28, Rue du
Faubourg Saint-Denis. I'm sorry to bother you. It's probably some sort of
hoax. A few minutes ago a customer approached the counter that deals with registered
parcels … Hello? … The counter-clerk, Mademoiselle Denfer, told me that he
seemed to be in a great hurry. He kept turning round. He pushed a piece of paper under
her nose. He said: “Don't try to understand. Phone this message through to
Inspector Maigret at once.” Then he vanished into the crowd.

‘The member of staff concerned
reported this to me. I have the piece of paper in front of me. It's written in
pencil, a terrible scrawl. Looks like the man wrote the note while he was walking along.

‘This is what it says: “I
couldn't make it to the Canon”. Does that mean anything to you? It's
meaningless to me. But no matter. Then there's a word I can't read.
“Now there's two of them. The small dark one has come back.”
It's the word “dark” I'm not sure of … Say again? …
Fair enough, if that's what you think it says … There's more:
“I'm sure they've decided to get me today. I'm not far from the
Quai. But they're cunning. Warn your officers to be on their
guard.”

‘That's it. If you want,
I'll send the note by telegram messenger … By taxi? Most certainly. Provided
that you bear the cost, because I cannot undertake …'

‘Hello? … Janvier? … You
can come back now.'

Half an hour later the two of them sat
smoking in Maigret's office, where a small round patch of red showed under the
stove.

‘I expect you managed to find time to
have lunch?'

‘I had sauerkraut and frankfurters at
the Canon …'

Him as well! Meantime, Maigret had alerted
cycle-mounted patrols as well as the municipal police. Parisians who walked into
department stores, jostled each other on pavements, flocked into cinemas or hurried down
the steps of Métro stations, did not notice a thing. But hundreds of eyes
scrutinized the crowds, pausing on anyone wearing a beige raincoat or sporting a grey
hat.

There was another sharp shower at about five
o'clock, when the number of pedestrians in and around the Châtelet reached
its peak. The pavements glistened, a halo surrounded every streetlamp and along every
kerb, at intervals of ten metres, people stood and raised their arms every time a taxi
drove past.

‘The landlord of the Caves du
Beaujolais reckons he's thirty-five or forty. The man who runs the Tabac des
Vosges puts him at about thirty. He's clean-shaven, rosy-cheeked and blue-eyed. As
to what kind of man he is, I didn't manage to form any idea. I was told that
you see lots like him about
…'

Madame Maigret, who was having her sister to
dinner, phoned at six to make sure her husband wouldn't be home late and to ask
him to call in at the pâtisserie on his way home.

‘Can you keep an eye on things here
until nine? I'll get Lucas to replace you after that …'

Janvier was willing. There was nothing to do
but wait.

‘I want to be phoned at home if there
are any developments.'

He did not forget to call in at the
pâtisserie in Avenue de la République, the only one in Paris, said Madame
Maigret, capable of making a decent mille-feuille. He kissed his sister-in-law, who as
always smelled of lavender. They ate dinner. He drank a glass of calvados. Before
walking Odette to the Métro, he rang the Police Judiciaire.

‘Lucas? … Any news? … Are
you still in my office?'

Lucas, ensconced in Maigret's own
chair, probably had his feet propped up on the desk, reading.

‘Just carry on as you are. Good
night.'

As he walked back from the Métro
station, Boulevard Richard-Lenoir was deserted, and his footsteps were loud on the
pavement. Hearing other footsteps behind him, he stiffened, turned instinctively because
he was thinking about his man who even now was perhaps still wandering through the
streets, fearful, avoiding dark places, seeking safety in bars and cafés.

He fell asleep before his wife – so
she said at least, as she always did, just as she also claimed that he snored –
and the alarm-clock on the bedside table registered 2.20 when the phone dragged him from
his sleep. It was Lucas.

‘Maybe I'm disturbing you for
nothing, sir. I haven't got many details yet. But the duty desk of the Police
Emergency Service has just let me know that the body of a man has been found in Place de
la Concorde. Near Quai des Tuileries. That's the jurisdiction of the first
arrondissement
. I've asked the main station there not to touch
anything … What? … Fine. If you wish. I'll send a taxi for
you.'

Madame Maigret sighed as she watched her
husband who got into his trousers but couldn't find his shirt.

‘Do you think you'll be gone
long?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Couldn't you send one of your
inspectors instead?'

When he opened the sideboard in the dining
room, she knew he was about to pour himself a tot of calvados. Then he came back for his
pipes, which he had forgotten.

The taxi was waiting for him. The Grands
Boulevards were almost deserted. A huge moon, far brighter than usual, hung over the
green dome of the Opera House.

Place de la Concorde. Two cars were parked
one behind the other along the kerb, near the Tuileries Gardens, and shadowy figures
came and went.

The first thing Maigret noticed as he got
out of the taxi was the smudge made by a beige raincoat on the silvery pavement.

Then, as police officers in capes stepped
aside and an inspector from the
arrondissement
advanced to meet him, he
muttered:

‘So it wasn't a hoax. They
really did for him!'

The sound of lapping blew on a cool breeze
off the Seine, which was no distance away. Traffic emerging from Rue Royale moved
noiselessly towards the Champs-Élysées.

The electric sign outside Maxim's was
a red presence in the night.

‘Single wound with a knife,
sir,' said Inspector Lequeux, whom Maigret knew well. ‘We were waiting for
you before we moved him.'

What was it at that moment that gave Maigret
the feeling that there was something here that was not quite right?

Place de la Concorde was too big, too light,
too airy with, at its centre, the tall, bold white needle of the obelisk. None of this
seemed to belong to the same world as the phone calls he had got that morning from the
Caves du Beaujolais, the Tabac des Vosges and the Quatre Sergents on Boulevard
Beaumarchais.

Up to and including that last call and the
note handed in at the post office on Rue du Daubourg Saint-Denis, the man had confined
himself to a part of town known for its narrow, well-populated streets.

Does a man who knows he is being followed,
who senses there is a murderer breathing down his neck and is expecting the fatal blow
to fall at any moment, suddenly switch to wide open spaces like Place de la
Concorde?

‘You'll find that he
wasn't killed here …'

Confirmation would come an hour later when
Officer Piedbœuf, who had been on duty outside a nightclub in Rue de Douai, filed
his report.

A car had pulled up at the door of the club.
In it were two men in dinner suits and two women in evening clothes. All four were in
high spirits, slightly the worse for drink, one of the men in particular. As the others
went inside, he turned on his heel and came back.

‘Ah, officer … I don't
know if I'm doing the right thing saying this, because I don't want to ruin
our evening. But it can't be helped. You can make of it what you like. Just now,
as we were driving across Place de la Concorde, the car in front of us stopped. I was
driving and slowed, thinking that it had broken down. They pulled something out of the
car and dumped it on the pavement. I think it was a body …

‘The car was a yellow Citroën,
with a Paris registration. The last two digits on the number plate were a 3 and an
8.'

Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!