Cécile is Dead (5 page)

Up on the first floor, Maigret could hear
footsteps and a baby crying.

‘That's in Madame
Bourniquel's apartment,' Madame With-All-Due-Respect told him. ‘Her
husband's a commercial traveller. He has a little car; he must be down in the
south-west at the moment. He stays away for three
months at a time. They already have four children, and
there's a fifth on the way, although there's been trouble over the pram.
Madame Boynet, God rest her soul, wouldn't have it left out in the corridor, so it
had to be taken upstairs and down again twice a day … look, here comes their maid
putting out the rubbish.'

The timer switch had turned the electric
light on, and a small maid in a white apron came past, her shape distorted by the
enormous galvanized metal rubbish bucket she was holding at arm's length.

‘What was I saying? Oh yes … Will you
take a glass of wine, inspector? Yes, yes, please do! I have a bottle open, Monsieur
Bourniquel gave it to me, he's in the wine trade, you see. Well, one fine day, it
must be about a dozen years ago, Madame Boynet's sister died in Fontenay, she was
a widow too, and Madame Boynet took in her three children, two girls and a boy. Everyone
around here was amazed by her generosity … she occupied the whole of the fifth floor at
the time. Monsieur Gérard, the boy, he was the first to leave. He enlisted, probably so
that he could move out of his aunt's apartment. Then he married. He lives in Paris
near the Bastille. He doesn't come to visit often. I've an idea things
aren't going well for him.'

‘Have you seen him
recently?'

‘Usually when he visits he waits
outside until his sister comes downstairs. He's not proud. His wife's in the
family way, too. He did come last week, and he went upstairs … I think he must have
needed money. He wasn't looking happy when he came down again. With all due
respect,
you had to be pretty spry to get
anything out of his aunt … To your very good health!'

She turned abruptly and stared at the door.
The timer switch had not come on, but a slight noise could be heard, and Madame
With-All-Due-Respect rose and brusquely opened the door. Maigret saw the figure of a
young girl retreating.

‘Wandering around on the stairs again,
Mademoiselle Nouchi? Asking for trouble, if you ask me!'

She sat down again, saying peevishly,
‘And me with a big building like this to look after! Those people … they're
the tenants on the fifth floor, the landlady's neighbours. Well, as I was saying,
first Monsieur Gérard left to go into the army, then his younger sister Berthe, who
didn't get on with her aunt either, left home. She's a salesgirl in the
Galeries Lafayette. So the old lady took advantage of that to let the other half of the
apartment to those Hungarians, the Siveschis. They have two daughters, Nouchi and Potsi
… Potsi is the plump one, she's always going about half-naked. But it's a
fact that Nouchi, who's no more than sixteen, isn't much better. She's
everywhere in the evening, all over the place, sometimes even hanging around by the
front door …'

It seemed best to let the concierge talk on
as she pleased and try to work it all out for himself. So on the first floor there was
the Bourniquel family, four children, Bourniquel himself away a lot of the time, a maid,
and Madame Bourniquel, who was expecting again.

On the fifth floor, the Siveschis. Maigret
had met one of the family that morning, the plump and forthcoming
Potsi, and he had just caught a sight of her thinner sister
Nouchi.

‘… Their mother never tells them off.
People like that, they don't think the same way we do. Would you believe it, only
last week I went upstairs with post for them? I knock on the door. “Come
in,” says a voice, so I open the door, thinking nothing of it, and what do I see?
Madame Siveschi without a stitch of clothing on her, smoking a cigarette and looking
back at me as bold as brass. And her daughters were there, too!'

‘What is Monsieur Siveschi's
profession?'

‘His profession – oh, my dear sir,
with all due respect! He comes and goes, he always has books under his arm, he's
the one who does the family shopping. They're behind with the rent, but he
doesn't seem to mind when the bailiff turns up. In fact you'd think it
amused him. Not like poor little Monsieur Leloup – Monsieur Gaston, I call him. He keeps
the bicycle shop. A good, deserving young fellow, used to be a newspaper vendor, but he
bravely set up in business. He finds things difficult at the end of the month, and at
those times I swear he doesn't dare to look people in the face, not even me,
although … well, he got married hardly three months ago, and what do you think? To save
on their own accommodation they sleep at the back of the shop, among the tyres and spare
wheels. Wait a minute – I think that little pest Nouchi …'

It was Maigret who went to open the door. He
had made out the little Hungarian girl's face behind it: her big dark eyes, her
blood-red lips.

‘Did you want something?' he
asked.

To which, not in the
least taken aback, she replied, ‘Oh yes, I wanted to see you. They say
you're the famous Detective Chief Inspector Maigret.'

She was looking him straight in the face.
She might be thin and narrow-hipped, but she had well-shaped, pointed breasts, shown off
to advantage by a blouse that fitted rather too tightly.

‘Well, you've seen me
now.'

‘Aren't you going to question me
too?'

‘Do you have anything to tell
me?'

‘I might have.'

Outraged, Madame With-All-Due-Respect sighed
and shook her head so far as her stiff neck allowed.

‘Come in. So what's it
about?'

The girl seemed to be very much at home in
the lodge. She was triumphant. Anyone would have thought she'd won a bet that she
could succeed in approaching the inspector.

‘I wanted to talk to you about
Monsieur Dandurand.'

‘Who's he?' asked Maigret,
turning to the concierge.

Indignant at Nouchi's presence, she
replied, ‘I've no idea what she's thinking of telling you, but with
all due respect these girls tell lies as easy as breathing … Monsieur Dandurand is a
retired lawyer, a very nice gentleman, very serious, quiet and all. He occupies the
whole fourth floor; he's been there for years. He goes out for his meals, he
doesn't have visitors. I'm sure he won't be late coming
home.'

‘Well,' said Nouchi with
composure, ‘Monsieur Dandurand is an old pig. Every time I go downstairs
he's
watching for me behind his door.
He's followed me out into the street several times. And last month, when I was
passing his door on the landing, he tried beckoning me in.'

Madame With-All-Due-Respect threw up her
arms, as if to ask whether anyone had ever heard of such horrors.

‘So on Monday I went in, just out of
curiosity, and he wanted to show me his collection of photographs … there wasn't
anything disgusting, I promise you. He told me that if I went to see him now and then
he'd give me …'

‘Don't believe a word she says,
inspector!'

‘I tell you it's true. So I told
Potsi at once, and she went to look at the photographs as well. And he made her a
proposition as well …'

‘What did he offer her?'

‘The same as me, a wristwatch. He must
have quite a stock of them. And now I can add something else. One night when I
couldn't get to sleep, I heard sounds on the landing. I got up and went over to
his door and I looked through the keyhole and I saw …'

‘Excuse me,' said Maigret.
‘Was the light on in the stairwell, then?'

He sensed her hesitation, as she was
momentarily disconcerted.

‘No,' she said at last.
‘But there was moonlight.'

‘How could the moon be shining on the
stairwell?'

‘Through the skylight. There's a
skylight just above the landing.'

It was true. Maigret remembered the
skylight. But why had she hesitated when she mentioned light?

‘Thank you,
mademoiselle. You can go home now. Your parents must be worried about you.'

‘They're at the cinema with my
sister.'

She looked put out. Anyone might think she
had hoped that Maigret would go upstairs with her!

‘Is there anything else you'd
like to ask me?' she suggested.

‘No, that's all. Good
evening.'

‘Is it true that Cécile is
dead?'

He did not reply to that, but closed the
door behind her.

‘It's a crying shame, with all
due respect,' sighed the concierge. ‘Another glass of wine, inspector?
She's all but inviting men into her bedroom while her parents are out. Did you see
the way she looked at you? I blushed for my sex!'

The cars and trucks were still going along
the road. Maigret sat down again in the wicker armchair, which creaked under his weight.
The concierge put more fuel in the stove, and when she sat down once more the cat jumped
on her lap. It was warm in her lodge. They seemed far from anywhere. The cars and trucks
were in another world, as if they were on a different planet and nothing outside the
lodge was alive, except for the apartment building and the families in it. Above the
bed, Maigret saw the pear-shaped rubber device that opened the front door.

‘No one can get into the building
without your knowledge, can they?'

‘It would be difficult, because there
isn't a key.'

‘Could anyone get in through the
shops?'

‘The inside doors that communicate
with the shops have
been bricked up. Madame
Boynet was frightened of thieves.'

‘Didn't you tell me that she
hadn't left the house for several months?'

‘You must remember that she
wasn't entirely powerless. She got about the apartment, leaning on a stick.
Sometimes she dragged herself out on the landing to keep an eye on the tenants or see if
I was doing the cleaning properly. You didn't hear her coming; she had her own way
of creeping up on you in her slippers, and she'd put a rubber end on her
walking-stick.'

‘Did she have many
visitors?'

‘No one except for her nephew,
Monsieur Gérard. He sometimes came. His younger sister Berthe never set foot in her
aunt's place. With all due respect, inspector, I think Berthe has a man friend.
One Sunday when I went to the cemetery I met him, a very good-looking gentleman about
thirty years old, and I thought he was married, but I couldn't see whether he was
wearing a wedding ring …'

‘To sum up, Madame Boynet lived
entirely alone with Cécile?'

‘Poor girl! So gentle, so devoted! Her
aunt treated her like a servant, and she never complained. Now there was one who
didn't go chasing men! Not strong, either. She had a weak constitution and a
delicate stomach, but that didn't prevent her from going down five floors with the
rubbish bucket and to bring up coal.'

‘So I suppose it was Cécile who took
the money to the bank?'

‘What bank?'

‘I assume that
when Madame Boynet got the rent money …'

‘Oh, she wouldn't for the world
have put her money in a bank. She was too distrustful. That reminds me that at first
Monsieur Bourniquel wanted to pay by cheque. “What's all this,” she
said indignantly. “You just tell the gentleman that I want proper money.”
Monsieur Bourniquel stuck to his guns, and that went on for two weeks, but in the end he
had to do as she wanted. Another glass of wine, inspector? I don't often drink,
but when there's a good reason to …'

The bell rang above the bed. She rose,
leaned over the eiderdown and pressed the rubber pear, telling Maigret,
‘That's Monsieur Deséglise the tenant on the second floor left. He's a
bus conductor. He works different hours every week.'

Sure enough, Maigret saw a man wearing the
uniform cap of the Paris bus company passing along the corridor.

‘There's a piano teacher on the
same floor, Mademoiselle Paucot, she's an old maid. She has a pupil every hour,
and when it's raining the stairs get terribly dirty. The third floor is empty. You
probably saw on the door that it's to let. The last tenants were thrown out
because they missed paying the rent twice running. All the same, they gave me a tip when
they moved in, and they were very polite … It's not always the rich who are most
polite, is it? I'm surprised that Monsieur Dandurand isn't in yet. When I
think what that girl dared to insinuate … Girls like those two, a vicious pair they are,
they'd see a man sent to prison just to make themselves seem interesting. Did you
notice the
way she was looking at you? A man
of your age, married, in public service. I know what that's like, my husband was
in public service too, he was on the railways. Ah, here's Monsieur
Dandurand.'

She rose and leaned over to press the rubber
pear again. Light showed both in the corridor and on the stairs. Maigret heard the soft
sound of an umbrella folding, and the faint crunch of shoes being conscientiously wiped
on a doormat.

‘Monsieur Dandurand isn't one to
get the stairs dirty.'

A dry cough. Slow, measured footsteps. The
door of the concierge's lodge opened.

‘Any post for me, Madame
Benoit?'

‘Not this evening, with all due
respect to you, Monsieur Dandurand.'

He was a man of fifty with a grey
complexion, grey hair, dressed entirely in black, his umbrella wet with rain. He had
raised his eyes to the inspector, who in turn had frowned, because he thought he had
seen that face somewhere before.

At the moment the name of Dandurand meant
nothing to him, yet he was sure he knew the man. He racked his brains for the memory.
Where had he seen him?