Cécile is Dead (12 page)

In the course of every notably successful
investigation, or almost every one of them, there was at least one journalist who
published a column on what had now to some
extent become a traditional subject: The Methods of Detective
Chief Inspector Maigret.

Let the journalist try to solve it then,
Maigret thought, leaving the cinema … having a bite to eat, drinking beer. Sitting at
the steamed-up window of La Coupole, he looked like some stout provincial astonished by
all the hurry and bustle of Paris.

To be honest, he wasn't thinking of
anything. He both was and was not in Boulevard Montparnasse, for wherever he went he
took the building like a slab of Neapolitan ice cream with him. He went into it. He came
out again. He watched Madame With-All-Due-Respect in her lair … he went up the stairs,
he came down them again.

The pensioner with the tinted hair had been
strangled: fact one. Her money and the paperwork relating to it had disappeared: fact
two.

Eight hundred thousand francs in
thousand-franc notes. He tried to imagine what such a pile of banknotes looked like.

Cécile in the Aquarium, the waiting room at
Quai des Orfèvres; she had been there since eight in the morning.

It was strange, but he was already having
difficulty in conjuring up her face, familiar to him as its features had been. He saw in
his mind's eye the black coat, the green hat, and on her knees that enormous,
ridiculous handbag. It looked like an attaché case, and she took it everywhere with
her.

Cécile herself had been murdered, and the
bag had disappeared …

Maigret stayed where he was, his glass of
beer on hold,
hardly aware of what he was
looking at. Anyone who spoke to him at that moment would have had to bring him back from
very far away.

The jarring aspect of the case …

He mustn't go too fast. He
mustn't scare the truth away, for fear of losing sight of it again.

Cécile. The handbag. The broom cupboard
…

Her aunt who had been strangled …

Because Cécile with her squint had been
strangled too, it had been assumed – Maigret himself had assumed – that the two crimes
…

He heaved a sigh of relief and took a large,
frothy mouthful of beer.

His mistake, the mistake that had left him
going round in circles like a blind carousel horse, was to have looked for a single
murderer.

Why not two? Why suppose from the first that
the same person had committed both crimes?

L'Intransigeant
from the
sixth … ask to see
L'Intran
for the sixth of the month, he told
himself.

A waiter brought him the newspaper, and he
looked at it. The photograph splashed all over the front page made him frown. It showed
him larger than he imagined himself, larger than he thought he really was, his pipe
fiercely clamped in his jaws, one hand on the shoulder of a young man in a trenchcoat,
none other than Gérard. He didn't remember placing his hand on Cécile's
brother's shoulder. He must have done it without thinking.

The reporter had drawn his own conclusions,
for the wording under the picture ran:

Pure chance? It
rather looks as if the heavy hand of the law, in the person of Detective Chief
Inspector Maigret, is coming down on the trembling shoulder of a guilty man.

‘Idiot!' exclaimed Maigret.
‘Waiter … what do I owe you?'

He was both furious and satisfied. He left
La Coupole with a firm tread very different from his gait when he had left the cinema
and entered the café. He would take a taxi – never mind the cashier's insistence
that the Métro was the quickest way to get from A to B.

Ten minutes later, he was making his way
into the Police Judiciaire and opening the door of his office. The Pole was there,
perched on the front of a chair, while Lucas was ensconced in the inspector's own
armchair. A gesture from Maigret, and Lucas followed his boss into the inspectors'
office.

‘Janvier and I have been questioning
him for ten hours. He hasn't cracked yet, but I get the impression he's
beginning to waver. If I'm not much mistaken, he'll be ready to talk some
time in the small hours.' He wouldn't be the first whose endurance had to be
pushed to its limits. ‘Maybe if you could come back at about two or three in the
morning and deliver the final blow …'

‘I just don't have time,'
Maigret growled.

The offices were beginning to empty; there
would be only one light left on in the huge, dusty corridor, and a single man on watch
at the switchboard. So the Pole would be left facing the persistent Lucas in
Maigret's office, with Janvier taking over from Lucas now and then, giving both
officers time for a beer and a bite to eat
in the Brasserie Dauphine.

‘Did anyone phone for me?'

‘A man called Dandurand.'

‘Any message from him?'

‘Yes, he said he wouldn't be
leaving his apartment, but he has some interesting news for you.'

‘And no one called in
person?'

‘I don't know … you'd have
to ask the clerk.'

The clerk said yes, there had been someone
to see Maigret. ‘A young fellow in a raincoat with a mourning band on one sleeve.
He was in a bad way, very upset, wanted to know when you'd be back. I said I
didn't know. Then he wanted your home address, but I wasn't giving him
that.'

‘Gérard Pardon?'

‘A name like that, yes. Didn't
want to fill in a form.'

‘When was this?'

‘About half an hour ago.'

‘And he'll have had a newspaper
in his hand, or in his pocket,' said the inspector, to the clerk's
surprise.

‘Yes, you're right, sir. It was
L'Intran
. He was holding it all crumpled up.'

Maigret went back into the inspectors'
office. ‘Who's free at the moment? Torrence?'

‘I'm supposed to be going to
Bourg-la-Reine, sir.'

‘Never mind that. Go to Rue du
Pas-de-la-Mule instead. Number 22. Would you recognize the lad?'

‘Cécile's brother, yes. I saw
him in Bourg-la-Reine.'

‘Right. Ring his doorbell, and I hope
he'll be back there. If he is, find a reason to stick close to him. We
don't want him doing anything stupid,
understand? Go gently with him, don't scare him – the opposite, in
fact.'

‘What if he isn't
home?'

Maigret's face darkened and he made a
helpless gesture. ‘If he's not home … well, I suppose we can only wait for a
phone call from the river patrol, unless he's managed to get hold of a revolver …
Just a minute … Anyway, telephone me at – wait a moment, who's likely to have a
telephone at home? Dandurand, for sure! Telephone me at Charles Dandurand's
address. You'll find the number in the phone book. Goodnight, then.'

He went back into his own office for a
moment, just long enough to scrutinize the Pole slowly from head to foot, as if taking
the man's moral temperature. As he left he winked at Lucas, who went back to
interrogating the Pole. The wink meant that they'd soon have him where they wanted
him.

A taxi took Maigret to Route
d'Orléans, and he got out opposite the apartment building, which was beginning to
be a familiar sight. Who was on watch? He glanced around, and a figure moved out of the
shadows.

‘I'm here, sir.'

Verduret was a recent recruit, a nice boy,
in awe of his boss, so much so that he was inclined to stutter when he talked to
him.

‘Any news?'

‘The fourth-floor tenant, Monsieur
Charles, came home by tram at six. Someone was waiting for him in the corridor. A fat
little man, sir, in a grey overcoat with a half-belt at the back and a briefcase under
his arm.'

A moment's
thought enabled Maigret to place the visitor. He must be the lawyer representing
Monfils, Maître Leloup.

‘Did he stay long?'

‘Half an hour. Monsieur Siveschi, the
Hungarian gentleman, went out about five, and I haven't seen him come back yet.
And then there's his daughter …'

The young officer pointed to two figures
merging with the shadows, standing by the fence round some waste ground.

‘It's been going on for
three-quarters of an hour,' he sighed, ‘and they don't so much as
move.'

Imperceptibly Maigret blushed and went into
the building. In passing, he greeted Madame Benoit, who was sitting over a plate of
soup, and weightily climbed the four floors up. Monsieur Charles must have recognized
his step, because he opened the door before the inspector rang the bell.

‘I was expecting you. Please come in.
After your conversation with my friends this morning …'

There were no two ways about it, Maigret
couldn't get used to the rancid odour of the old bachelor's apartment. He
felt a revulsion for it that was both physical and moral and was puffing out dense
clouds of smoke.

‘What did Maître Leloup come
for?'

‘You already know he's been
here? He's threatening me with proceedings for misappropriation of the
inheritance. He feels sure that Juliette made a will, basing his evidence on the letters
that she wrote her cousin Monfils every New Year. You'd better ask him to let you
see them. She describes
her nephew and
nieces as degenerate parasites, tells him how ungrateful they've been to her and
says that after all she's done for them in memory of her sister they're only
after her money. “It will serve them right,” she ended one letter,
“and the Boynets and Machepieds too, when they discover that I've left
everything to you.”'

‘Did Maître Leloup confine himself to
threats?'

The grey-faced Monsieur Charles stretched
his lips in an icy smile. ‘He made me what he calls generous and honest
propositions.'

‘Share and share alike?'

‘Something of that nature. Which would
be an appreciable sum if there was a will.' Monsieur Dandurand cracked his finger
joints. ‘But those people didn't know Juliette. To tell you the truth, I was
the only one to see her as she really was. She was so terrified of death, and having to
leave her money behind some day, that she was close to believing she'd never die.
Or at least not for a very long time. “When I'm an old woman,” she was
always saying to me …'

Obnoxious as the man was, Maigret sensed
that he was not lying. All he himself had seen of Juliette was a corpse with badly
tinted hair, but his impression corresponded exactly with what Monsieur Charles
said.

‘So the outcome was …'

‘I showed Maître Leloup the door. But
that's not why I phoned you. I realize that my situation is a delicate one, and I
can see that my best chance is for you to find the murderer …'

‘Or
murderers,' growled Maigret, scrutinizing a watercolour hanging on the wall.

‘Or murderers, if you like. Indeed,
there's nothing to prove that there weren't several of them
involved.'

‘In any case, there are two bodies, so
that means there were two crimes.'

And Maigret placidly refilled and lit his
pipe.

‘That's certainly one theory … I
was telling you that after you left, I remembered something,' said Monsieur
Charles. He took a notebook covered in waxcloth off the corner of his desk. ‘I
wasn't a practising lawyer for so many years without acquiring some of the habits
of the profession. Every time I took Juliette the interest on her investments, I made
sure to write down the numbers of the banknotes … it may be ridiculous, but as it
happens that might come in useful for you.'

The notebook was full of figures.

‘Don't forget, I had nothing
else to fill my days.'

Indeed, Maigret could well imagine him
sitting in this study, with its smell of crushed bugs, copying down column after column
of figures with chilly satisfaction. Never mind the fact that the banknotes were not
his! He still enjoyed the sensual pleasure of fingering them, recording their numbers,
sorting them into bundles, grouping the bundles together and putting elastic bands round
them.

‘So you see,' he concluded,
holding the notebook out to Maigret, ‘that if you earn the reward offered by my
friends, I shall have assisted you to the best of my ability.'

Nouchi could be heard on her way home, going
up the stairs three at a time. She stopped for a moment outside Monsieur Charles'
door. Had she been behaving as badly as the plump girl in the cinema?

What business of his
was that? In what way did the girl's words and actions …

‘As it happens, I didn't dine at
my usual restaurant because I was waiting for you, so I made do with a cold cutlet. Have
you dined yourself? Will you take a little glass of something?'

‘No, thank you.'

‘One day you'll realize that
I've done all I could, and – well, just as you like.'

As Maigret opened the door, without even
saying that he was leaving, he let in blasts of piano music. No doubt Mademoiselle
Paucot, the piano teacher, was getting her revenge on the scales through which her
pupils stumbled.