Friend of Madame Maigret (10 page)

They hadn't found anything. Either the story was a complete fabrication for some purpose which he couldn't guess, or they hadn't had time to introduce the poison, or else it had been in the section that had all been spilled in the métro carriage.

Maigret avoided going back through the Headquarters offices and came out into the rain on the Quai des Orfèvres, turned up his coat collar, walked toward the Pont Saint-Michel and had to hail about ten taxis before one stopped.

“Place Blanche. Corner of the rue Lepic.”

He felt out of sorts, dissatisfied with himself and with the way the case was going. He was particularly resentful of Philippe Liotard, who had forced him to abandon his usual methods and mobilize all the departments right at the start.

Now too many people whom he couldn't control personally were mixed up in the case, which seemed to be getting more and more complicated all by itself; new characters were appearing whom he knew almost nothing about and whose roles he couldn't even guess at.

On two occasions he had been tempted to go back to the very beginning of the inquiry, all on his own, slowly, deliberately, following his favorite method, but this was no longer possible, the machine was in motion, and there was no longer any way to stop it.

He would have liked, for instance, to question the concierge again, the cobbler across the street, the old maid on the fourth floor. But what was the use? Everybody had questioned them by now, inspectors, journalists, amateur detectives, people in the street. Their statements had been published in the papers, and they couldn't go back on them now. It was like a trail that has been heedlessly trampled on by fifty people.

“Do you think the bookbinder's a murderer, Monsieur Maigret?”

It was the driver, who had recognized him and was questioning him as if they were on familiar terms.

“I don't know.”

“If I were you I'd pay particular attention to the little boy. That seems to me the best lead, and I'm not saying that just because I have a kid his age.”

Even the taxi drivers were taking part in it! He got out at the corner of the rue Lepic and went into the bar on the corner for a drink. The rain was streaming in big drops from the awning around the terrace, where a few women were sitting as rigid as waxworks. He knew most of them. Some of them probably took their clients to the Hotel Beauséjour.

There was even one, a very fat woman, blocking the doorway of the hotel, and she smiled, thinking he wanted her, then recognized him and apologized.

He went up the badly lighted stairs, found the manageress in the office, dressed this time in black silk with gold-rimmed spectacles, her hair a flaming red.

“Please sit down. Will you excuse me a moment?

“A towel for Number 17, Emma!”

She came back.

“Have you found anything new?”

“I'd like you to examine these photos carefully.”

First he handed her the pictures of the handful of women Moers had picked out. She looked at them one by one, shaking her head every time, and passed the batch back to him.

“No. That's not the type at all. She's more refined than these women anyway. Perhaps not exactly refined. What I mean is 'respectable.' You know what I'm getting at? She looks like a decent little woman, whereas the ones you've shown me might be women who come to this hotel.”

“What about these?”

These were the dark-haired men. She still shook her head.

“No. That's not it at all. I don't know how to explain to you. These look too much like dagoes. Monsieur Levine, you know, could have stayed at a big hotel in the Champs-Élysées without being conspicuous.”

“And these?”

He handed her the last batch, sighing, and the moment she came to the third photograph she stiffened, cast a furtive little glance at the chief inspector. Was she reluctant to speak out?

“Is that him?”

“It may be. Wait till I take it to the light.”

A girl was coming upstairs, with a client who kept to the darkest part of the staircase.

“Take Number 17, Clémence. The room's just been done.”

She shifted her spectacles on her nose.

“I'd swear it's him, yes. It's a pity he can't move. If I saw him walk, even from behind, I'd know him at once. But it's very unlikely that I'm mistaken.”

On the back of the photograph Moers had written a résumé of the man's career. Maigret noted with interest that he was probably a Belgian, like the bookbinder.
Probably
, for he was known under several different names, and his true identity had never been established.

“Thank you.”

“I hope you'll give me credit for this. I could very well have pretended not to recognize him. After all, they may be dangerous, and I'm taking a big risk.”

She reeked so strongly of scent, the odors in the house were so clinging that he was glad to be back on the pavement and to breathe the smell of the rain-washed streets.

It was not yet seven o'clock. Little Lapointe must have gone to meet his sister and tell her what had happened at the Quai in the course of the day, just as Maigret had advised him to.

He was a good boy, too easily upset as yet, too emotional, but they could probably make something of him. Lucas, in his office, was still acting as conductor of an orchestra, keeping in touch by telephone with all departments, all sections of Paris, and anywhere else that the trio was being searched for.

As for Janvier, he was still sticking to Alfonsi, who had gone back to the rue de Turenne and spent nearly an hour in the basement with Fernande.

The chief inspector drank another glass of beer while he read the notes written by Moers, which reminded him of something.

Maigret was remembering. He was remembering particularly the one man of the three who played the clown in baggy black clothes and interminable shoes, with a blue chin, a huge mouth, and a green wig.

The man seemed completely disjointed, and after each leap he would pretend to fall so heavily that it seemed impossible he hadn't broken something.

 

Then followed the names by which he had been known to the police since then: Mosselaer, Van Vlanderen, Paterson, Smith, Thomas. . . . He had been arrested successively in London, Manchester, Brussels, Amsterdam, and three or four times in Paris.

However, he had never been convicted, due to lack of proof. Whichever identity he was using, his papers were invariably in order, and he spoke four or five languages perfectly enough to change his nationality as he pleased.

The first time he had been prosecuted was in London, where he was claiming to be a Swiss citizen and working as an interpreter in a large hotel. A jewel case had disappeared from a suite that he had been seen leaving, but the owner of the jewels, an old American lady, testified that she herself had summoned him to the suite to translate a letter she had received from Germany.

In Amsterdam, four years later, he had been suspected of confidence tricking. No proof could be established, any more than it could the first time, and he disappeared from circulation for a while.

The General Investigations Department in Paris was the next to take an interest in him, again unsuccessfully, during a period when the cross-frontier traffic in gold was being carried onto a big scale, and when Moss, now Joseph Thomas, was shuttling between France and Belgium.

He had his ups and downs, living now in a first-class, sometimes even a luxury, hotel, now in a shabby furnished room.

For three years there had been no record of him anywhere. It was not known in what country or under what name he was operating, assuming that he still was operating.

Maigret walked toward the telephone booth and got Lucas on the phone.

“Go up and see Moers and ask him for all the dope on a man named Moss. Yes. Tell him he's one of our boys. He'll give you his description and all the rest of it. Put out a general alert. But he's not to be arrested. If he's found, they must try not to arouse his suspicion. Get it?”

“I get it, Chief. Someone's just spotted the child again.”

“Where?”

“Avenue Denfert-Rochereau. I've sent someone over. I'm waiting. I haven't got enough men available any more. There's also been a call from the Gare du Nord. Torrence has gone there.”

He felt like walking a bit, in the rain, and went through the place d'Anvers, where he looked at the bench, now dripping with rain, where Madame Maigret had waited. Opposite, on the building at the corner of the avenue Trudaine, there was a sign on which was written in big, faded letters the word:
Dentist.

He would come back. There were so many things he wanted to do, which the bustle of events always forced him to postpone to the next day.

He jumped on a bus. When he arrived at his own door, he was astonished not to hear any sound from the kitchen, not to smell anything. He entered, went through the dining room, where the table wasn't set, and finally saw Madame Maigret, in her petticoat, engaged in taking off her stockings.

This was so unlike her that he didn't know what to say, and she burst out laughing when she saw his big round eyes.

“Are you cross, Maigret?”

Her voice held a tone of almost aggressive good humor that was quite new to him, and on her bed he could see her best dress, her smart hat.

“You'll have to be content with a cold dinner. Just imagine, I've been so busy that I haven't had time to prepare anything. Besides, you so seldom come home to meals, nowadays!”

And, sitting in her easy chair, she was rubbing her feet with a sigh of relief.

“I think I never walked so far in my life!”

He stood there, in his overcoat, his wet hat on his head, looking at her and waiting, and she was deliberately keeping him on tenterhooks.

“I began with the big shops although I was almost sure that was no use. But you never know; and I didn't want to regret my carelessness later. Then I did the whole of the rue La Fayette, I went up the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette and I walked along the rue Blanche, the rue de Clichy. I came back down toward the Opéra, all this on foot, even after it had begun to rain. I suppose I may as well admit that yesterday, without telling you, I'd already 'one' the Ternes area and the Champs-Élysées.

“That was to make absolutely sure, too, because I suspected that it was too expensive around there.”

At last he brought out the sentence she was waiting for, which she had been trying to elicit for quite a while.

“What were you looking for?”

“The hat, of course! Didn't you catch on? It was on my mind, that business. I thought it wasn't a man's job. A coat and skirt is a coat and skirt, especially a blue one. But a hat, that's different, and I'd had a good look at this one. They've been wearing white hats for several weeks now. Only one hat is never exactly like another. Do you see? You don't mind if the meal's cold? I brought some cooked meat from the Italian place, Parma ham, pickled mushrooms, and a whole lot of ready-made hors d'oeuvre.”

“What about the hat?”

“Are you interested in it, Maigret? By the way, your own is dripping on the carpet. You'd better take it off.”

She had been successful, otherwise she wouldn't be in such a teasing mood and would never take the liberty of playing with him like this. He would just have to let her take her time and maintain his grumpy expression, because she was enjoying it.

While she was putting on a woollen dress, he sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I knew it wasn't a hat from a really first-class milliner and that there was no sense in looking in the rue de la Paix, the rue Saint-Honoré or the avenue Matignon. Anyhow, those places don't put anything in the window, and I'd have had to go in and pretend to be a customer. Can you see me trying on hats at Caroline Reboux' or Rose Valois'?

“But it wasn't a hat from the Galeries or the Printemps either.

“Somewhere between the two. A hat from a milliner's definitely, and a milliner with good taste.

“That's why I did all the little shops, especially around the place d'Anvers, or not too far away at all events.

“I saw at least a hundred white hats, and yet it was a pearl gray one that finally stopped me, in the rue Caumartin, at Hélène et Rosine.

“It was exactly the same hat in another shade, and I'm sure I'm not mistaken. I told you that the one belonging to the lady with the little boy had a tiny veil, three or four fingers wide, that came down just over the eyes.

“The gray hat had the same veil.”

“Did you go in?”

Maigret had to make an effort not to smile, for it was the first time that the shy Madame Maigret had taken part in an investigation, no doubt also the first time she had entered a milliner's in the neighborhood of the Opéra.

“Are you surprised? Do you think I look too much of a stay-at-home? Yes, I did go in. I was afraid it might be closed. I asked perfectly naturally if they hadn't got the same hat in white.

“The lady said not, but they had it in pale blue, yellow, and jade green. She added that she had had it in white, but that she had sold it more than a month ago.”

“What did you do?” he asked, intrigued.

“I heaved a deep sigh and said to her:

“‘That must have been the one I saw a friend of mine wearing.'