A Man's Head (4 page)

Training his binoculars on the closed window on the first floor of the Citanguette, Maigret could imagine the sleeping man as clearly as if he had been sitting at his bedside.

Yet he had met him for the first time only in July on the day, barely forty-eight hours after the murder at Saint-Cloud, he had laid one hand on his shoulder and muttered:

‘Don't kick up a fuss. Just come with me …'

They were in Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, in a nondescript building where Joseph Heurtin had a room on the sixth floor.

The woman in the concierge's lodge said:

‘He was steady, quiet, hard-working … Except that sometimes he seemed a bit odd …'

‘Did he ever have callers?'

‘No. And, except just recently, he never got home after midnight.'

‘And recently?'

‘He got back later two or three times. Once, last Wednesday, he rang for me to open the front door. Just before four in the morning, it was.'

That Wednesday was the day the murder had been committed at Saint-Cloud. The pathologists gave the time of death of both women as around 2 a.m.

But didn't they already have formal proof that Heurtin was guilty? The evidence had been gathered by Maigret himself.

The villa was located on the Saint-Germain road, less than a kilometre from the Pavillon Bleu. Now, Heurtin walked into this establishment at midnight. He was alone. He drank four grogs one after another. As he paid, he dropped a train ticket from
his pocket, single, third class, Paris to Saint-Cloud.

Mrs Henderson, the widow of an American diplomat with connections to one of the great banking families, lived by herself in the villa. Since the death of her husband, there was no one on the ground floor.

She had only one servant, more companion than maid, Élise Chatrier, who was French and had spent her childhood in England and been given an excellent education.

Twice a week, a gardener came from Saint-Cloud to attend to the modest grounds which surrounded the villa.

Few visitors. From time to time, William Crosby, the old lady's nephew, called with his wife.

Now, on that July night – it was the 7th – cars were driving past as usual along the main road to Deauville.

At 1 a.m. the Pavillon Bleu and the other restaurants and supper-clubs closed their doors.

A motorist subsequently stated that around 2.30 a.m. he had seen a light on the first floor of the villa and shadows moving about oddly.

At six, the gardener arrived. It was his day. He usually opened the gate at eight, without making any noise. Élise Chatrier would call him in and give him his breakfast.

But at eight, he could hear nothing. At nine, the villa's doors were still not open. He felt anxious, knocked and, when there was no reply, he went off and alerted the police officer on duty at the nearest crossroads.

Soon after, the crime was discovered. In Mrs Henderson's room, the body of the old lady was lying across the hearthrug, her nightdress all bloodied. She had been stabbed a dozen times in the chest with a knife.

Élise Chatrier had experienced the same fate in the room next door, where she slept at the request of her employer, who was afraid of being taken ill in the night.

A brutal double murder, the kind the police call a cold, callous crime in all its horror.

And evidence everywhere: footprints, traces of bloody fingers on the curtains …

There were the usual formalities: arrival of the prosecutor's people, a visit from Criminal Records, multiple tests, autopsies …

It fell to Maigret to lead the police investigation, and it took him less than two days to get on Heurtin's trail.

It was so clearly signposted! In the corridors of the villa there were no carpets, and the wooden floors were kept polished.

A few photographs were enough to produce footprints of exceptional clarity.

They were of shoes with brand-new rubber soles. In order to prevent them slipping when it rained, the rubber was ribbed in a distinctive pattern and, in the middle of each, the maker's name was still clearly legible together with an order
number.

A few hours later, Maigret walked into a shoe shop on Boulevard Raspail and learned that just one pair of shoes in that style and size – a 44 – had been sold during the preceding few weeks.

‘I've got it! It was a delivery man. He turned up with his three-wheel carrier. We often see him hereabouts.'

Another few hours later and the inspector had questioned Monsieur Gérardier, the florist in Rue de Sèvres, and found the famous shoes on the feet of his delivery man, Joseph Heurtin.

All that remained was to compare fingerprints. This was done in the labs of Criminal Records in the Palais de Justice.

The experts, instruments in hand, pored over them, and their conclusion was instantaneous:

‘That's our man!'

‘Why did you do it?'

‘I never killed anybody!'

‘Who gave you Madame Henderson's address?'

‘I never killed anybody!'

‘What were you doing in her villa at two in the morning?'

‘I don't know!'

‘How did you get back from Saint-Cloud?'

‘I never got back from Saint-Cloud.'

He had a large head, pallid and horribly battered. And his eyelids were red like those of a man who has not slept for several nights.

In his room in Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, a search discovered a bloodstained handkerchief. Tests showed that it was human blood and even found bacilli in it which matched those in the blood of Mrs Henderson.

‘I never killed anybody!'

‘Who do you want for a lawyer?'

‘I don't want a lawyer.'

The court assigned one to him, a brief named Joly, who was only thirty and out of his depth.

The police psychiatrists kept Heurtin under observation for seven days then reported:

‘He's not a degenerate! The man is responsible for his actions, despite his current depressed state, which is the result of a violent nervous shock to the system.'

Then it was the holiday period. Another investigation called Maigret away to Deauville. In the view of Coméliau, the examining magistrate, the case was straightforward, and a ruling from the prosecution service confirmed his opinion.

And this despite the fact that Heurtin had not stolen anything and had no apparent reason for wanting the deaths of Mrs Henderson and her maid.

Maigret had traced his past as far back as he could. He got to know the man in both mind and body at every stage of his life.

He was born at Melun, where his father was a waiter at the Hôtel de la Seine and his mother a laundress.

Three years later, his parents were running a bistro not far from Melun prison. They did not make a go of it and moved to an inn at Nandy, in the Seine-et-Marne department.

Joseph Heurtin was six when he acquired a sister, Odette.

Maigret had a picture of him, in a sailor suit, crouching by a bearskin on which the baby, arms and legs in the air, was lying.

At thirteen, Heurtin was looking after the horses and helping his father to serve the customers.

At seventeen, he was a waiter at Fontainebleau, in a smart hotel.

At twenty-one, after finishing his military service, he arrived in Paris, found somewhere to live in Rue Monsieur-le-Prince and was taken on by Monsieur Gérardier as a delivery man.

‘He used to read a lot,' said Monsieur Gérardier.

‘His only entertainment was going to the cinema,' said his landlady.

But there was no visible connection between him and the villa at Saint-Cloud!

‘Had you ever been to Saint-Cloud before?'

‘Never!'

‘What did you do on Sundays?'

‘I used to read.'

Mrs Henderson was not a customer of the florist. Nothing singled out her villa enough to attract a visit from a burglar more than any other. In any case, nothing had been stolen.

‘Why don't you talk?'

‘I got nothing to say.'

For a whole month, Maigret had been detained at Deauville, where he had hunted down a gang of international swindlers.

In September, he had visited Heurtin in his cell at the Santé. He had found a shadow of the man.

‘I don't know anything! I never killed anybody!'

‘But you were at Saint-Cloud …'

‘I want to be left alone.'

‘A run-of-the-mill case!' was the opinion of the prosecutor's office. ‘It will keep for the autumn.'

And on 1 October, Heurtin opened the autumn session of the Assizes.

Joly, his counsel, had come up with a single defence tactic: to ask for a new examination of the mental state of his client. The doctor he had chosen had told the court:

‘Diminished responsibility …'

To which the reply from the prosecution was:

‘This was a cold, callous and appalling crime! If Heurtin didn't steal anything, it was because he was prevented from doing so by some circumstance or other. All told, he struck his victims eighteen times with a knife!'

Photographs of the victims had been handed round the members of the jury, who pushed them away with disgust.

‘GUILTY', on all counts.

Death! The next day, Joseph Heurtin was transferred to the top-security block with four other men who had also been sentenced to death.

‘Isn't there anything you want to tell me?' Maigret made a point of coming to ask him, for he was not happy with himself.

‘No.'

‘You do know you're going to be executed?'

Heurtin wept, still as pale as ever, his eyes red.

‘Who was in this with you?'

‘Nobody.'

Maigret returned every day, even though officially he had no business looking into the case any further.

And every morning he found Heurtin more and more crushed but calm. He had stopped shaking. There was even, at times, a glint of irony in his eyes …

 … until the morning the prisoner heard footsteps in the next cell, and then loud screams.

They had come to fetch number 9, a son who had killed his father, to take him to the scaffold.

The next day, Heurtin, number 11, was in tears. But he said nothing. All he did was lie stretched out on his bunk with his teeth clenched and his face to the wall.

When Maigret got an idea into his head, it stayed anchored there for a long time.

He went to see Coméliau and told him: ‘That man is either mad or he's innocent.'

‘Impossible! In any case, sentence has been passed on him.'

Maigret, 1 metre 80 tall, powerful and as burly as a market porter, dug his heels in.

‘Don't forget that the prosecution was unable to establish how he got back to Paris from Saint-Cloud. He didn't take the train. He didn't get on a tram. He didn't walk back!'

Jokes were made at his expense.

‘Would you like to try an experiment?'

‘You'll have to take this to the minister!'

And Maigret, solemn and stubborn, did so. He himself wrote the note which gave Heurtin the escape plan.

‘Listen! Either there were others in it with him, and he'll think the note is from them, or there weren't, in which case he'll be on his guard and suspect a trap. I'll take full responsibility for him. You have my
absolute word that he won't escape.'

The inspector's stolid, calm, rock-hard face was a sight to be seen!

The tussle lasted three days. He raised the spectre of a miscarriage of justice and the scandal which would follow sooner or later.

‘But you're the one who arrested him!'

‘Because, as a policeman, it's my job to draw logical conclusions from the material evidence presented.'

‘And as a man?'

‘I'm still waiting to be morally sure …'

‘And?'

‘Either he's mad or he's innocent.'

‘Why doesn't he say anything?'

‘The test I propose will tell us why.'

Then there were phone calls, discussions …

‘You're putting your career on the line, detective chief inspector. Think about it!'

‘I have thought about it.'

The note was duly passed to the prisoner, who had not shown it to anyone and, for the last few days, had eaten with a heartier appetite.

‘So he wasn't surprised!' said Maigret. ‘Therefore he was expecting something of the sort! Therefore he has accomplices who may have promised they'd get him out.'

‘Unless he's pretending to be stupid! And then the minute he gets outside, he'll give you the slip. Have a care, detective chief inspector, your career …'

‘But his head is at stake too …'

And now Maigret was ensconced in a leather chair in front of a window in a hotel bedroom. From time to time, he trained his binoculars on the Citanguette, where the dockers and boatmen went for a drink.

Down on the quayside, Inspector Janvier was kicking his heels, trying to look inconspicuous.

Dufour – as Maigret had observed for himself – had eaten grilled chitterlings and mashed potato and was now drinking a glass of calvados.

The window of the upstairs bedroom was still shut.

‘Operator, put me through to the Citanguette
.
'

‘The line is busy.'

‘Too bad! Cut them off!'

A moment later:

‘Is that you, Dufour?'

The inspector did not waste words:

‘He's still sleeping!'

There was a knock on the door. It was Sergeant Lucas.

The pipe-smoke was so thick that it made him cough.