Félicie (11 page)

‘When I noticed …'

‘You mean when you noticed that you had
this gun in the pocket of your overcoat?'

‘You know? …'

‘You'd just got
on the Métro train. You were crushed up against a young woman in full mourning, and just as
she was making for the door you felt something heavy being slipped into your pocket.'

‘I didn't realize until
afterwards.'

‘And you were scared.'

‘I've never handled a gun in my life.
I didn't even know if it was loaded. I still don't …'

To the horror of the stationery clerk, Maigret
releases the cartridge clip, from which there is one bullet missing.

‘But because you remembered the girl in the
mourning weeds …'

‘At first, I thought I should hand this
… this object in to the police …'

Monsieur 13 is getting rattled.

‘You are the susceptible type, Monsieur
Charles. Women unnerve you, don't they? I'd bet that you've never had much to
do with them.'

A bell rings. The clerk gazes in a panic at a
panel fixed to the front of his desk.

‘That's my boss. He wants me …
Can I …'

‘Yes, go! I know everything I wanted to
know.'

‘But that young woman … Tell me
… Did she really …'

A shadow appears in Maigret's eyes and then
is gone.

‘All in good time, Monsieur Charles. Now
hurry up. Your boss is getting impatient.'

For the bell is ringing again, in the most
self-important way.

A little later, the inspector barks to a
taxi-driver: ‘Gastinne-Renette, the gunsmith.'

So over a period of three
days, feeling that her every move was being watched, that the house and the garden were about to
be searched with a fine-tooth comb, Félicie has kept the revolver on her person! He
pictures her in the front seat of the van. The road is not yet quiet enough. Maybe the vehicle
is being followed. Louvet would notice if she … Wait for Paris …

At Porte Maillot, an inspector picks up her
trail. To give herself time to think she goes into a cake shop, where she stuffs herself full of
cream cakes. And a glass of port … Perhaps she doesn't like port but it ranks as one
of the rare, rich things like the grapes and champagne which she took to the
hospital. … Make for the Métro … Not enough people about at this time of
day. … She waits … The inspector is there. He never takes his eyes off her.

Eventually six o'clock comes round. People
crowd on to the trains. The passengers are packed close together … The heaven-sent
overcoat with the gaping pockets.

Such a shame that Félicie cannot see Maigret
as the taxi ferries him to the expert gunsmith. If, perhaps for the space of a second, she could
forget the scares and panics, would she feel a sense of pride as she reads the admiration in the
inspector's expression?

How many million times has he trudged heavily up
the wide, dusty staircase of police headquarters in Quai des Orfèvres, where the wooden
treads always creak faintly under the soles of his shoes and lethal draughts lurk all through
winter? Maigret has some ingrained habits, one of which, for instance, consists of turning as he
reaches the last few steps and looking back down the stairwell behind him. Another, when he
starts plodding along the high, wide corridor of the Police Judiciaire, requires him to glance
casually into what he calls the
lantern
. Situated to the left of the staircase, it is
actually the glass-walled waiting room. Inside are a table covered with green cloth, green
armchairs and on the walls black frames containing in small round mounted photographs of
policemen who have died in the line of duty.

The lantern is crowded, although it is already
five in the afternoon. Maigret is so preoccupied that for a moment he forgets that these people
are here because they are part of his inquiries. He recognizes several faces. Someone bears down
on him.

‘Ah, inspector! How much longer is this
going to take? Isn't there any way of jumping the queue?'

The cream of Place Pigalle is assembled here,
summoned at his order by one of his inspectors.

‘You know me,
don't you? You know I'm going straight and that I wouldn't get myself mixed up
in anything like this. I already wasted the afternoon …'

Maigret, broad-backed, walks away. As he goes he
nudges open, seemingly by accident, two or three of the doors which line up as far as the eye
can see. He reigns supreme at Quai des Orfèvres, which he knows like the back of his hand.
Interviews are taking place in every available space, even in his own office, where Rondonnet, a
new man, is sitting in Maigret's own chair, smoking a pipe that looks exactly like his. He
has carried imitation to the point of having beers sent up from the Brasserie Dauphine. In the
hot seat is a waiter from the Pelican. Rondonnet winks at Maigret, abandons his informant for a
moment and joins the inspector in the corridor, where so many scenes like this have been
enacted.

‘There's something going on, sir.
I'm not yet sure what exactly. You know how it works … I'm deliberately
letting them stew in the lantern. I've a feeling they're all sticking to the same
story. They know something … Have you seen the commissioner? Apparently he's been
trying to get hold of you by phone for the last hour … Oh, by the way, there's a
message here for you …'

He goes back inside and looks on the desk.
It's from Madame Maigret.

Élise has just arrived from Épinal
with her husband and the children. We'll all be eating together here, at home. Do try to
be back. They've brought mushrooms.

Maigret won't be
there. His mind is elsewhere. He is anxious to try out an idea which he had earlier while
waiting for the results of the ballistics tests carried out on the premises of Monsieur
Gastinne-Renette. He was walking up and down in a basement, marking time in one of the shooting
galleries where a young couple – newlyweds – who were about to embark on their
honeymoon in Africa were trying out various kinds of fearsome guns.

Once more he was transported back to
Pegleg's house. Once again he was – mentally – climbing up the polished stairs
when, still in his head, he suddenly paused on the landing, hesitated between the two doors and
then remembered that there were three rooms.

‘Good God!'

After that he was in an even greater hurry to get
back to where he was almost certain he would make a breakthrough. He already knew what the
result of the ballistics test would be: he was sure that old Lapie had been killed by the gun he
had recovered in Avenue de Wagram. A Smith & Wesson. Not a toy. Not the kind of gun bought
by amateurs, but a serious weapon, the tool of the professional.

A quarter of an hour later, old Monsieur
Gastinne-Renette himself confirmed his theory.

‘Absolutely right, detective chief
inspector. I'll send you a detailed report this evening, with enlargements of the
photographs.'

Even so, Maigret had wanted to call in at Quai
des Orfèvres to make sure that nothing new had turned up.
Now he
knocks on the commissioner's baize door and enters.

‘Ah! There you are, Maigret! I was
beginning to be afraid of not reaching you by phone. Was it you who sent Dunan to Rue
Lepic?'

Maigret had forgotten all about this. Yes, it
was. To be on the safe side. He sent Dunan to do a thorough search of Jacques
Pétillon's room at the Hôtel Beauséjour.

‘He phoned in earlier. It seems that
someone got there before him. He wanted to see you as soon as possible. Are you going over
there?'

Maigret nods. He is heavy, sullen. He hates the
idea that the thread of his thoughts is about to be interrupted. Those thoughts centre on
Jeanneville, not Rue Lepic.

As he emerges from the Police Judiciaire, yet
another man runs after him, one of those corralled in the glass cage.

‘Isn't there some way I can be seen
now? I've arranged to meet someone …'

He shrugs his shoulders.

Not long after this, a taxi drops him in Place
Blanche. As he is about to get out on to the pavement, he suddenly loses his momentum. The
square is brimming with sunshine. The terrace of a large café is alive with customers, and
it is as if people have nothing better to do than sit at tables, drink cool beer or aperitifs
and allow their eyes to linger on all the pretty women who pass by.

For a moment, Maigret envies them. He thinks of
his wife, who is at this moment being reunited with her sister and brother-in-law in their
apartment in Avenue Richard
Lenoir. He thinks of the mushrooms simmering
gently, giving off an aroma of garlic and damp forest. He loves mushrooms.

He too would like to sit down at the terrace of
that café. He hasn't slept enough these last few nights, he's been snatching
odd meals, drinking indiscriminately, always on the hoof, and has the feeling that the damned
job he has chosen to do makes him live other people's lives instead of quietly living his
own. Fortunately in a few years he will be able to retire. Then he will wear a large straw hat,
cultivate his garden, a garden as manicured as old Lapie's, with a wine store to which he
will wend his way from time to time and take a cooling draught.

‘Give me a beer, and make it
quick.'

He hardly takes time to sit down. He sees
Inspector Dunan, who has been watching out for him.

‘I've been waiting for you, sir.
You've got to see …'

Back
there
, Félicie is most likely
cooking her supper on the gas stove, with the kitchen door open to the vegetable patch now
gilded by the rays of the setting sun.

He strides into the lobby of the Hôtel
Beauséjour, which is squeezed between a pork-butcher's and a shoe shop. In the
office, behind a small window, an enormously fat man is sitting in a Louis XV elbow chair next
to the key rack, with his dropsical legs soaking in an enamel bucket.

‘I can assure you it wasn't my fault.
If you don't believe me, you can check with Ernest. He's the one who showed them
up.'

Ernest, the porter, is even more in need of sleep
than Maigret, for he works both nights and days, rarely sleeping
more than
two hours at a stretch. He explains in a drawling voice:

‘It was early in the afternoon. At that
time of day, we only get the
drop-ins
, if you take my meaning. All the rooms on the
first floor are set aside for the trade. Usually we know all the girls. As they walk past they
call out:

‘“Going up to number 8
…”

‘And when they come down they get their
percentage, because we give them a cut of one franc on the room …

‘Now, as I said at the time, I didn't
know that one. Brunette, not too shop-soiled. She waited in the corridor to be given a
key.'

‘What about the man who was with
her?' asks Maigret.

‘Couldn't say. We don't look
too closely, you know, because they don't like it. Most of the time they're a bit
shy. Some deliberately look away or pretend to be wiping their noses; in winter they turn up the
collars of their overcoats. He was just like all the rest. I didn't notice anything
special about him. I showed them up to number 5, which was free.'

A couple pass by. A voice says:

‘Number 9 all right, Ernest?'

The old man with the dropsical legs checks the
key rack and replies with an affirmative growl.

‘That's Jaja. She's a regular
… What was I saying? … Oh yes. The man came down first after about a quarter of an
hour. It's almost always the same. I didn't see the woman leave and ten minutes
later at most I went up to the room, which was empty, and tidied it up …

‘“She must have gone without me
noticing,” I said to myself.

‘But just then a lot
of clients arrived, and I thought no more about it. It was a good half-hour later that I was
amazed to see the woman walk out behind my back.

‘“Hello!” I said to myself.
“Where's she been, then?”

‘Then I forgot all about it until your
inspector, who asked for the key to the musician's room, came and started asking
questions.'

‘You say you'd never seen her
before?'

‘No, I can't say that. She
wasn't a regular, that's for sure. But I had a feeling I'd come across her
somewhere. Her face wasn't entirely new to me.'

‘How long have you worked at the Hôtel
Beauséjour?'

‘Five years.'

‘So she could have been an old
customer?'

‘It's possible. There've been
so many come through that door, you know! You see them for a fortnight or a month, then they
move to another neighbourhood or out of town altogether unless your lot don't cart them
off first.'

A heavy-footed Maigret climbs the stairs with
Inspector Dunan. Up on the fifth floor, where Pétillon lived, the lock in the door
hasn't been forced. It's a basic lock and the simplest skeleton-key would make short
work of it.

Looking around him, Maigret gives a whistle of
surprise, for as thorough jobs go, this is a thorough job. There might not be much in the way of
furniture, but it can safely be said that every inch of it has been painstakingly searched.
Pétillon's grey suit is on the bedside rug with the pockets turned inside out, every
drawer gapes, underwear has been scattered everywhere and the visitor has taken a pair
of scissors to the mattress, pillow and eiderdown, so that floccules of wool
and feathers form a layer of what looks like snow on the carpet.

‘What do you reckon, sir?'

‘Any prints?'

‘The crew from Criminal Records has already
been. I took the liberty of phoning them. They sent Moers, but he didn't find anything.
What were the people who turned the place over like this looking for?'

That is not what interests Maigret. What they
were after, as Dunan using the plural, expressed it, is much less important than the frenzied
way they went about looking for it. They also did it without putting a foot wrong!

The revolver which killed Jules Lapie is a Smith
& Wesson, a gun to be found in the pocket of every seasoned
tough guy
.

What happened after the old man died?
Pétillon panics. He tours the nightclubs and the more or less unsavoury bars in Montmartre,
looking for someone he does not find. Though he has a feeling the police are on his trail, he
goes ahead all the same, keeps on looking, goes as far as Rouen, where he asks about a girl
named Adèle, who hadn't worked in the Tivoli brasserie for several months.

This is when he loses heart. He is at the end of
his tether. Maigret knows he is ripe for plucking: he'll talk …

And at exactly that point, he is coolly mown down
in the street, and whoever pulled the trigger is no choirboy.

He's also probably the
same man who, wasting no time, hurries off to Jeanneville.

In Place Pigalle, Pétillon was standing next
to Maigret, but that did not stop his assailant.

Lapie's house is being watched. The man
must know, or at least suspect it, but that doesn't stop him either. He gets into the
bedroom, puts a chair in front of the wardrobe and prises one of its boards loose.

Did he find what he was looking for? Disturbed by
Félicie, he knocks her over and vanishes, the only trace he leaves being the prints of a
pair of new shoes.

It happened around three or four o'clock in
the morning. And the very next afternoon Pétillon's room was ransacked.

This time, it was a woman. A brunette and
good-looking, like the Adèle who had worked in the brasserie. She does not make any
mistakes. She might have got into the hotel, which was well used to the
drop-in
trade,
to use the porter's word, either with her lover or an accomplice. But how can anyone tell
if the Hôtel Beauséjour is not also under surveillance? She plays it straight. It is
with a man she has just picked up that she asks for a room. But when he has gone, she takes to
the stairs, goes up to the fifth floor – there's no one about on the upper floors at
this time of day – and searches the room meticulously.