The Late Monsieur Gallet (13 page)

‘I'd like to ask you a question,' he said without turning to the two women. ‘Your husband must have known that your marriage to him estranged you from your family.'

It was Françoise who answered. ‘That's not true, inspector! At first we welcomed him. Several times, my husband advised him to find another job and offered to help him. It was only when we saw that he would always be someone of low
achievement, incapable of making an effort, that we avoided him. He would have shown us in a poor light.'

‘What about you, madame?' Maigret asked gently, turning to Madame Gallet. ‘You encouraged him to change to a different profession? You blamed his lack of ambition?'

‘It seems to me that anything like that belongs to our private life. Isn't it my right to keep that to myself?'

Hearing her just now through the door, Maigret had been able to imagine a woman made more human by her grief. A woman who had abandoned that scornful dignity that he now found neither more nor less robust than on the first day.

‘Did your son get on with his father?'

Her sister intervened again. ‘Henry will make something of himself! He's a Préjean, although physically he looks like his father. And he did right to get away from that atmosphere when he came of age. He was back at
work this morning in spite of that attack of his liver trouble he had last night.'

Maigret looked at the table, trying to imagine Émile Gallet somewhere in this room, but he couldn't do it, perhaps because the inhabitants of this villa never set foot in the sitting room except when they were receiving a formal visit from
someone.

‘Did you have a message for me, inspector?'

‘No … I'll leave you now, ladies, with my apologies for disturbing you. However … yes, I do have one question. Do you have a photograph of your husband in Indochina? I believe he lived there before his
marriage.'

‘No, I have no photograph of him then. My husband almost never talked about that time of his life.'

‘Do you know what he studied as a young man?'

‘He was very clever … I remember that he talked to my father about Latin literature.'

‘But you don't know the name of the school he attended?'

‘All I know is that he was a native of Nantes.'

‘Thank you very much. And I do apologize to you once again.'

He picked up his hat and stepped backwards into the corridor, still unable to identify the obscure anxiety he felt each time he set foot in that house.

‘I hope my name will not be given to the press, inspector,' said Françoise, in a tone not far from impertinence. ‘You may know that my husband is a departmental councillor. He has a great deal of influence in government circles,
and as you are an official …'

Maigret did not feel brave enough to reply to this. He merely looked her between the eyes and then took his leave, sighing.

As he crossed the tiny garden, escorted by the maid with the squint, he murmured thoughtfully, ‘You poor devil, Gallet!'

 • • • 

He briefly stopped at the Quai des Orfèvres to pick up his post, which included nothing bearing on the present case. On coming out of the building he looked in, on the off chance, at the shop of the gunsmith who had examined the bullet taken
from the dead man's skull as well as the two that had been aimed at Moers.

‘Have you finished examining those bullets?'

‘Yes, just this minute. I was going to write the report. All three bullets were fired from the same gun, no doubt about that. An automatic revolver, a precision weapon and one of the latest models, no doubt from the National Factory at
Herstal.'

Maigret was feeling gloomy. He shook hands with the gunsmith and hailed a taxi. ‘Rue Clignancourt, please.'

‘What number?'

‘Drop me off at either end of the street, it doesn't matter which.'

On the way he tried to banish from his mind the unpleasant memory of the Saint-Fargeau villa and the conversation between the two sisters. He wanted to concentrate only on the positive aspects of the problem. But as soon as he had put a few
simple ideas together, back came the woman Françoise whose husband was a departmental councillor – as she had been careful to point out – and who had come running to Les Marguerites on discovering that Madame Gallet had inherited 300,000 francs.

He would have shown us in a poor light.

And early in the marriage Émile Gallet had been badly
treated, just to get the idea into his head that he must do credit to the Préjeans, like their other sons-in-law. But he was only a commercial
traveller in gift items!

Yet he had the courage to sign that life assurance agreement and pay the premium for five years, thought Maigret, intrigued. His feelings were contradictory; he was both attracted and repelled by the complex physiognomy of his murder victim. Did
he do it because he loved his wife? She too must have given him a piece of her mind, more than once, about his humble station in life.

Funny sort of household! Funny sort of people, too. But in spite of everything hadn't Maigret felt, for a moment, that Madame Gallet felt genuine affection for her husband? True, he had heard her only through the door. That was all gone
when she was in front of him. Once again she had been the pretentious and disagreeable petit bourgeois woman who had talked to him on that first visit of his, and who was very much Françoise's sister.

Then there was Henry, who already had a thoughtful and suspicious expression when he was about to take his First Communion, and who at the age of twenty-two didn't marry Éléonore for fear of losing the pension she might get after her late
husband's death! Henry who had suffered an attack of his liver trouble but still went straight back to work!

It began to rain. The taxi driver pulled in to the side of the pavement so that he could put up the top of the car.

The three bullets had been fired from the same revolver – from which one might deduce that they had been fired by the same person. However, neither Henry nor Éléonore nor Saint-Hilaire could have fired the last two shots.

Nor could a vagrant. A vagrant doesn't kill for the sake of killing. He steals, and nothing had been stolen.

The lack of progress in this case, circling round the lacklustre and melancholy figure of the dead man, was getting Maigret down, and it was with a grumpy expression that he entered the first concierge's lodge in the Rue Clignancourt.

‘Do you know a Monsieur Jacob?'

‘What does he do?'

‘No idea. But anyway, he gets letters addressed to that name …'

The rain was still falling heavily, but the inspector was quite glad of it, because in this atmosphere the busy road, full of small shops and run-down buildings, was more in tune with his own frame of mind. This traipsing from building to
building was a job that could have been given to a junior officer, but Maigret didn't like the idea of getting a colleague mixed up in this case; he couldn't really have said why himself.

‘Monsieur Jacob?'

‘Not here. Try over there, you'll find some Jews.'

He had popped his head round the door or through the window of a hundred concierge lodges and questioned a hundred concierges, when one of them, a stout woman with tow-coloured hair, looked at him suspiciously.

‘What do you want with Monsieur Jacob? You're police, aren't you?'

‘Flying Squad, yes. Is he at home?'

‘You wouldn't expect him to be at home at this time of day!'

‘Where can I find him?'

‘In his usual place, of course! Corner of Rue Clignancourt and Boulevard Rochechouart. Here, I hope you're not going to bother him! Poor old fellow like that, I'm sure he never did
anyone any harm. So maybe he didn't always have a trading permit – is that why you're here?'

‘Does he get a lot of post?'

The concierge frowned. ‘So that's what you're here for, eh?' she said. ‘I might have known it. Not a nice story, that. You must know as well as me that he only got a letter once every two or three months.'

‘By registered post?'

‘No, more like a little package than a letter.'

‘Containing banknotes, I expect?'

‘How would I know?' she said tartly.

‘I think you do! Yes, I think you do! You felt those envelopes and you, too, had an idea that there were banknotes inside.'

‘And suppose there was? Monsieur Jacob wouldn't have been breaking no bank!'

‘Where's his room?'

‘His attic, you mean? Right up at the top. He has a hard time getting upstairs every evening with his crutches.'

‘Has no one ever come looking for him?'

‘Let's see … about three years ago. Old gentleman with a pointy beard, looked like a priest without a cassock. I told him, like I told you …'

‘Was Monsieur Jacob already getting letters?'

‘He'd just had one.'

‘Did the man wear a close-fitting jacket?'

‘He was all in black, like a priest.'

‘Doesn't Monsieur Jacob ever have visitors?'

‘There's only his daughter, she's a chambermaid in
a furnished place in the Rue Lepic, got a baby on the way.'

‘What's his profession?'

‘You mean you don't know? And you from the police and all? Are you making fun of me? Monsieur Jacob, why, he's the oldest newspaper seller in the area. Old as the hills, everyone knows him …'

 • • • 

Maigret stopped on the corner of Rue Clignancourt and Boulevard Rochechouart, outside a bar called Au Couchant. There was a vendor of peanuts and toasted almonds at the end of the terrace who probably sold chestnuts in winter. On the side of Rue
Clignancourt a little old man was sitting on a stool, reciting the names of newspapers in a hoarse voice which was lost in all the noise coming from the crossroads.

‘
Intran … Liberté … Presse … aris-Soir … Intran
 …'

A pair of crutches was propped against the front of his stall. One of the old man's feet had a leather shoe, but he wore only a shapeless slipper on the other.

At the sight of the newspaper seller, Maigret realized that ‘Monsieur Jacob' was not his real name but a nickname, because the old man had a long beard divided into two with two pointed ends, and above it was a curved nose in the
shape of those clay pipes known as Jacobs.

The inspector suddenly remembered the few words of a letter that Moers had been able to reconstruct:
twenty thousand … cash … Monday.
And suddenly, leaning over the lame man, he asked ‘Have you got the latest
consignment?'

Monsieur Jacob raised his head, opening and closing his reddened eyelids several times.

‘Who are you?' he asked at last, handing a copy of
L'Intransigeant
to a customer and looking in a box-wood bowl for the right change.

‘Police Judiciaire! Now, let's talk nicely, or I'll have to take you away. This is a nasty business.'

Monsieur Jacob spat on the pavement.

‘Then what?'

‘Do you have a typewriter?'

The old man cackled with laughter, this time spitting out a chewed cigarette end, of which he had quite a collection in front of him already.

‘No point playing who's cleverest,' he said in a thick voice. ‘You know it's not me. Though I'd have done best to stay away from trouble, for the little I've got out of it.'

‘How much?'

‘She gave me a hundred sous a letter. So it's a pathetic business.'

‘A business likely to land those involved in it in court.'

‘You don't say! So they really were notes of a thousand? I wasn't so sure. I felt the envelopes, they made a kind of silky sound. I held them up to the light, but I couldn't see inside, the paper was too thick.'

‘What did you do with them?'

‘Brought them here. Didn't even need to say when I'd be here … around five the little lady who bought an
Intran
off of me would turn up without fail, put the hundred sous in the bowl here and slip the package
into her bag.'

‘A small brunette?'

‘No, no, a tall blonde. More strawberry blonde, and ever so nicely dressed, my word, yes! She'd come up out of the Métro …'

‘When did she first ask you to do her this service?'

‘It'll be about three years back … wait a minute. Yes, my daughter had had her first baby, he was out at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges with a wet-nurse … that's right, a
little less than three years ago. It was getting late, I'd packed up the merchandise and was hoisting it on my back; she asked if I had a fixed address and if I could help her. We see all sorts around here. Well, so it was about getting letters addressed to me, not opening them,
bringing them here in the afternoon.'

‘Was it you who fixed the price at five francs a package?'

‘It was her … I was just pointing out it was worth more – joking, like – what with the price of a litre of red these days, but she started going over to the peanut vendor … an Algerian, he is. Some folk'll work for
nothing. So I said yes.'

‘And you don't know where she lives?'

Monsieur Jacob winked. ‘Not so stupid when it comes to it, eh? Even if you are police! There was someone else who tried to find out, early on that was. My concierge only told him I sold my papers here. She described him to me, and I
reckoned he was the young lady's father. So he started hanging around when there was a package for me to deliver, but never said a word to me. Yes, wait a minute – he lay low over there, behind the fruit stall. And then he went chasing off after her, but he didn't have any luck.
In the end he came to find me and offered me 1,000 francs for the young lady's address. He could hardly believe it when I said I had no more idea than he did. Seems like she led him a fine dance on who knows how many Métro trains and buses, and then she shook him off outside an
apartment building with two exits. He wasn't a joker either, that one. I soon caught on that he wasn't her father.
He tried his luck again, twice. I thought I ought to warn my customer, and I reckon she led him on another merry dance,
because he didn't try again. Well, and so what else do you think I got instead of that man's 1,000 francs? A whole louis! And I had to pretend I didn't have any change or I'd only have got ten francs, and she went off muttering something that wasn't very polite,
though I didn't understand it. She was a sly one! But talk about a cheapskate!'