The Two-Penny Bar (15 page)

His voice faltered. Maigret noticed his eyes filling with tears. He hastily changed the subject:

‘Your secretary seems very loyal too.'

‘She's a good girl. She looks after me really well. She must be devastated.'

‘I'd say she was fairly optimistic. She was asking when you would be coming back. All in all, you seem to be well liked.'

They fell silent again. They were now passing through Juvisy. At Orly, they saw the airfield searchlights raking the sky.

‘Was it you who gave Feinstein Ulrich's address?'

But Basso refused to answer.

‘Feinstein had lots of dealings with him. His name crops up in the accounts, along with the sums involved. At the time that Ulrich was murdered, Feinstein owed him at least 30,000 francs.'

No, Basso wouldn't reply. He sat there in obstinate silence.

‘What is your father-in-law's profession?'

‘He is a teacher in a school in Nancy. My wife trained as a teacher also.'

And so the conversation proceeded, drifting close to the trauma of recent events, then receding to the safety of small talk. At times Basso spoke quite normally, as if he
had forgotten his situation. Then came tense silences,
pregnant with unspoken thoughts.

‘Your wife is right. In the Feinstein case you have a good chance of being acquitted. At worst you may get a year in prison. As for the Ulrich case, however …'

Then, abruptly, he went on:

‘I'm going to put you in the cell at police headquarters tonight. Tomorrow we can get you transferred to a remand prison.'

Maigret tapped out his pipe and wound down the glass screen to speak to the driver:

‘Quai des Orfèvres! Go straight into the courtyard.'

Then without further ado, the inspector led Basso to the cell where Victor had been locked up.

‘Goodnight,' said Maigret, after checking that he had everything he needed in the cell. ‘I'll see you tomorrow. Have a think. Are you sure that you have nothing to say to me?'

Basso was perhaps too full of emotion to speak. He merely shook his head.

Confirm will arrive Thursday, stop. Will stay a few days, stop. Love.

It was Wednesday morning when Maigret wrote the telegram to his wife. He was in his office at the Quai des Orfèvres and he gave it to Jean to take to the post office.

A short while later, the examining magistrate in charge of the Feinstein case phoned him. Maigret told him:

‘I hope to be able to give you my completed case report
by this evening … Yes, of course, the guilty party too … No, no, not at all. Just a standard, open-and-shut case … Yes! Talk to you this evening. Goodbye.'

He got up and went into the operations room, where he found Lucas typing up a report.

‘How's our vagrant?'

‘I've handed over to Dubois. Nothing much to report. You know Victor started doing some work at the Salvation Army hostel. He seemed to get well into it. He'd told them about his lung, of course, so they were especially keen to
help him out. I think they'd started to regard him as a potential recruit. Who knows, we could have been seeing him in his uniform in a month or so.'

‘What happened?'

‘It's quite amusing. Yesterday evening a Salvation Army lieutenant asked him to do something or other. He refused and started kicking up a fuss about how he was being made to work like a dog despite all his afflictions. They asked him
to leave, and it ended up in fisticuffs. He had to be thrown out by force. He spent the night kipping under the Pont Marie. Now he's hanging about down by the river. Dubois will be ringing in soon to bring you up to date.'

‘I won't be here, so tell him to bring him in and lock him in the cell with the other person who's in there.'

‘OK.'

Maigret went home and spent the rest of the morning packing. He had lunch in a brasserie near Place de la République, checked the railway timetable and found that there was a handy train to Alsace at 10.40 in the evening.

These leisurely activities kept him occupied until four
o'clock in the afternoon, when he set off for the Taverne Royale. He had barely taken his place on the terrace when James turned up. They shook hands, and James
looked round for a waiter as he asked Maigret:

‘Pernod?'

‘Why not?'

‘Waiter, two Pernods!'

James crossed his legs, sighed and looked straight ahead like a man with nothing to say and nothing on his mind. It had clouded over. Unexpected gusts of wind swept the street, raising plumes of dust.

‘There's going to be a storm,' James sighed. Then abruptly: ‘Is it true what I read in the papers? You've arrested Basso?'

‘Yes. Yesterday afternoon.'

‘Cheers. It's stupid.'

‘What's stupid?'

‘What he did. A solid, respectable man like him losing his head like that. He'd have been better advised to turn himself in at the start and defend himself. What did he really have to lose?'

Maigret had already heard Madame Basso give the same speech and he smiled to himself.

‘Your good health. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong.'

‘What do you mean? It wasn't premeditated murder, was it? You can hardly even call it a crime.'

‘Quite. If Basso had only the death of Feinstein to answer for, then we could say he simply lost his head in a moment of weakness.'

Then, with a suddenness that made James jump, he called out:

‘Waiter! What do I owe you?'

‘Six-fifty.'

‘You're leaving?'

‘I have to go and see Basso.'

‘Ah.'

‘Would you like to see him? You can come too.'

In the taxi they made small talk.

‘How's Madame Basso bearing up?'

‘She's a very brave woman. And very cultured too. I wouldn't have thought that, seeing her that Sunday at Morsang in her sailing clothes.'

And Maigret asked him:

‘How is your wife?'

‘Fine, as usual.'

‘Not too upset by recent events?'

‘Why would she be? She's not the worrying sort. She takes care of the housework, she sews, she does her embroidery, she goes shopping, likes looking for bargains.'

‘We're here. This way.'

Maigret steered his companion across the courtyard. He asked the officer guarding the cell:

‘Are they here?'

‘Yes.'

‘Everything peaceful?'

‘Apart from the new one Dubois brought in this morning. Says he's going to appeal to the League of Human Rights.'

Maigret barely smiled. He opened the door of the cell and let James go in first.

There was only one bunk, and Victor was occupying it. He had taken off his jacket and sandals.

Basso was walking up and down with his hands behind his back when they came in. He looked at them both, questioningly, then fixed his eyes on Maigret.

Victor stood up grumpily, then sat down again, muttering inaudibly to himself.

‘I bumped into James and I thought you'd like to see him.'

‘Hello, James,' said Basso, shaking his hand.

But there was something missing. It was difficult to pinpoint. There was a certain reserve, a certain chill in the atmosphere. Maigret realized he would have to force the pace.

‘Gentlemen,' he began, ‘please take a seat, for we may be some time. You, make some room on the bunk. And please try to refrain from coughing for the next quarter of an hour. It cuts no ice in here.'

Victor merely sneered, like a man who was happy to bide his time.

‘Take a seat, James. You too, Monsieur Basso. Excellent. Now, if you're sitting comfortably, I would like to take a few moments to recap the story so far.

‘Some time ago, a man named Lenoir was sentenced to death. Before his execution he made an accusation against a certain individual whom he refused to name. It concerned an old case whose perpetrator no doubt felt was
now
safely gathering dust. Briefly, around six years ago a car drove away from an address in Paris and headed towards the Canal Saint-Martin. There, the driver lifted a body from the car and dropped it into the water.

‘No one would have known a thing about it but for the fact that the whole scene was witnessed by two young villains by the name of Lenoir and Victor Gaillard. It didn't cross their minds to inform the police. They preferred to profit
from their discovery, and so they traced the murderer and extorted various sums of money from him over a period of time.

‘However, being still novices, they failed to take adequate precautions. One fine day they discovered that their cash cow had upped and left.

‘And there we have it. The victim was called Ulrich. He was a Jewish second-hand dealer who lived on his own and consequently was missed by no one.'

Maigret slowly lit his pipe without looking at his audience. Nor did he look at them when he started talking again, but rather stared at his feet the whole time.

‘Six years later, Lenoir came across the murderer again quite by chance, but he was unable to resume his lucrative business because he was caught for a crime of his own and sentenced to death.

‘Now, listen carefully. Before he died, as I mentioned, he said a few things that narrowed down the field to a very select group of people. He also wrote to his former colleague to inform him of the discovery, and he hot-footed it to the
Two-Penny Bar.

‘And so we come, as it were, to the second act. Don't
interrupt, James! Same goes for you, Victor. We come to the Sunday when Feinstein was killed. Ulrich's murderer was at the Two-Penny Bar that day. It could
have been you, Basso, or me, or you, James, or Feinstein, or someone else. Only one person can tell us for certain, and that's Victor Gaillard, here present.'

Victor opened his mouth to speak, and Maigret literally shouted:

‘Silence!'

Then, in a quieter tone, he continued:

‘Now the said Victor Gaillard, who is a cunning little lowlife, doesn't want to give up the information for free. He wants 30,000 francs in return for the name. Let's say he'll settle for twenty-five. Silence, I say! Let
me finish! Now the police are not in the habit of doling out such large sums of money, so all they can do for Gaillard is to pursue him on a charge of blackmail.

‘Let us consider the various suspects. As I said earlier, all the people who were at the Two-Penny Bar on the Sunday in question could be under suspicion. Some more than others, however. For example, it is a fact that Basso once knew
Monsieur Ulrich. It is also a fact not only that Feinstein knew him, but that the moneylender's death meant he didn't have to repay the considerable sum of money he owed him.

‘Feinstein is dead. From what we have gathered, it is clear he was not a nice person to know. If he killed Ulrich, then the case is closed and no further action is required. Victor Gaillard could confirm this, but I am not in a
position to accept his blackmail … Silence! You will have a chance to speak when you are questioned.'

Victor was getting quite worked up and was trying to interrupt the inspector at every opportunity. Maigret still did not look at any of them. He had been speaking in a monotonous tone, as if reciting a lesson. Suddenly he went to the door,
murmuring:

‘I'll be back in a minute. I have an important phone call to make.'

The door opened, then closed behind him. Then the sound of his steps faded away up the stairs.

Maigret was talking to the examining magistrate on the phone.

‘Hello! Yes! Just give me another ten minutes … His name? I don't know yet … Yes, of course I'm serious. Do I ever joke about these things?'

He put down the receiver and started walking up and down his office. He went over to Jean.

‘By the way, I'll be away for a few days. Here is the address for forwarding my mail.'

He kept looking at his watch, then finally decided to go back down to the cell where he had left the three men.

When he came in, the first thing he saw was Victor's hate-filled face. He was no longer sitting on the bed, but was pacing angrily round the cell. Basso was sitting on the edge of the bunk with his head in his hands.

As for James, he was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, and he looked at Maigret with a strange smile.

‘I'm sorry for keeping you waiting. I …'

‘It's over,' said James. ‘You didn't need to pull that stunt with the phone call.'

And his smile grew broader the more Maigret looked discomfited.

‘Victor Gaillard will not earn his 30,000 francs, either
by talking or by keeping his mouth shut. I killed Ulrich.'

The inspector opened the door and called to an officer who was passing:

‘Lock this man up somewhere until I'm ready for him.'

He indicated Victor, who was still shouting:

‘Don't forget it was me who led you to Ulrich! Without me, you'd be nowhere. And that's worth …'