Friend of Madame Maigret (12 page)

“Is there anything else for me to do?” she inquired seriously.

“I don't know. Now that you've started . . .”

He bought his paper at the corner of the boulevard Voltaire, found no new statement by Philippe Liotard in it, no new challenge. The night porter at Claridge's had been discreet, for there was no mention of the countess either.

Back at the Quai, Lucas, relieving Torrence, had received his instructions, and the machine was functioning; they were now looking for the Italian countess on the Riviera and in foreign capitals, while inquiries were also being made about the man named Krynker and the maid.

On the bus platform, enveloped in fine rain, a passenger facing him was reading his paper, and this paper carried a headline that gave the chief inspector something to think about.

How many people, at that very minute, were actively engaged on it? Railway stations, ports, airports were still under observation. Hotels and boardinghouses were continuously being searched. Not only in Paris and in France, but in London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, they were trying to pick up the track of Alfred Moss.

Maigret got out at the rue de Turenne, entered the Tabac des Vosges to buy a packet of tobacco, and took the opportunity of drinking a glass of white wine. There were no reporters, nothing but local residents who were beginning to pipe down a bit.

The bookbinder's door was locked. He knocked, and soon saw Fernande emerging from the basement by the spiral staircase. In curlers, like Madame Maigret, she hesitated when she recognized him through the glass and finally came and opened the door.

“I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

It was chilly on the stairs, since the furnace had not been relighted.

“Wouldn't you rather come downstairs?”

He followed her into the kitchen, which she had been in the middle of cleaning when he had disturbed her.

She, too, seemed tired, with something like discouragement in her expression.

“Would you like a cup of coffee? I have some hot.”

He accepted, sat down by the table, and she finally sat down facing him, wrapping the folds of her dressing gown around her bare legs.

“Alfonsi came to see you yesterday. What does he want?”

“I don't know. He's interested mainly in the questions you asked me, keeps telling me not to trust you.”

“Did you mention the poisoning attempt to him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You didn't tell me not to. I can't remember how it came up in the conversation. He's working for Liotard and it seems all right for him to be kept informed.”

“No one else has been to see you?”

It seemed to him that the Fleming's wife hesitated, but it may have been the effect of weariness weighing upon her. She had helped herself to a big bowl of coffee. She probably relied on black coffee in copious amounts to keep her going.

“No. Nobody.”

“Did you tell your husband why you're not bringing his meals any more?”

“I managed to let him know. Thanks to you.”

“No one's rung you up?”

“No. I don't think so. I hear the bell occasionally. But by the time I get upstairs there's no one on the line.”

Then he took from his pocket the photograph of Alfred Moss.

“Do you recognize this man?”

She looked at the photograph, then at Maigret, and said quite naturally:

“Of course.”

“Who is it?”

“It's Alfred, my husband's brother.”

“Is it long since you last saw him?”

“I hardly ever see him. Sometimes he doesn't come here for more than a year. He lives abroad most of the time.”

“Do you know what he does?”

“Not exactly. Frans says he's an unfortunate character, a failure, who never had any luck.”

“He never mentioned his profession?”

“I know he worked in a circus, that he was an acrobat and broke his spine in a fall.”

“And since then?”

“Isn't he some kind of impresario?”

“Did you know he didn't call himself Steuvels like his brother, but Moss? Have you ever been told why?”

“Yes.”

She was reluctant to go on, looked at the picture that Maigret had left on the kitchen table, near the coffee bowls, then she got up to turn off the gas under a saucepan of water.

“I couldn't help guessing part of it. Perhaps if you questioned Frans on this subject he'd tell you more. You know that his parents were very poor, but that's not the whole story. Actually his mother was in the same game I used to be in myself, at Ghent, or rather in a shady district just outside the town.

“She drank, into the bargain. I wonder if she wasn't half crazy. She had seven or eight children and half the time she didn't know who their father was.

“It was Frans who chose the name Steuvels later. His mother's name was Mosselaer.”

“Is she dead?”

“I think so. He avoids mentioning her.”

“Has he kept in touch with his brothers and sisters?”

“I don't think so. Alfred's the only one who comes to see him from time to time, pretty seldom. He must have his ups and downs because sometimes he seems prosperous, he's well dressed, gets out of a taxi in front of the house and brings presents, while other times he's quite shabby.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Let me think. It must be two months ago at least.”

“Did he stay to dinner?”

“Yes, as a matter of course.”

“Tell me, on the occasion of these visits, did your husband ever try to get rid of you under any pretext?”

“No. Why? They were sometimes in the workshop by themselves, but from downstairs, where I was cooking, I could hear what they said.”

“What did they talk about?”

“Nothing particular. Moss liked to reminisce about the time when he was an acrobat and the different countries he'd lived in. And he was also the one who nearly always made allusions to their childhood and their mother, and that's how I picked up the few things I know.”

“Alfred is the younger, I suppose?”

“Three or four years younger. Afterward Frans would sometimes walk to the corner of the street with him. That's the only time I wasn't with them.”

“They never talked business?”

“Never.”

“Alfred never came with friends either, male or female?”

“He was always alone. I think he'd been married once. I'm not sure. It seems to me he mentioned it. In any case, he'd been in love with a woman, and she'd made him unhappy.”

It was warm and quiet in the little kitchen from which you couldn't see the outside world at all and where the light had to be kept on all day. Maigret would have liked to have Frans Steuvels there facing him and to talk to him as he was talking to his wife.

“You told me last time I was here that he practically never went out without you. Yet he went to the bank from time to time.”

“I don't call that going out. It's just around the corner. He only had to walk across the place des Vosges.”

“Otherwise you were together from morning to night?”

“Just about. I'd go shopping, of course, but always close by. Once in a blue moon I'd go into town to buy a few things. I'm not very stylish, as you may have noticed.”

“You never went to see relatives?”

“I only have my mother and my sister at Concarneau, and it took a fake telegram to get me to go and visit them.”

It was as though something were bothering Maigret.

“There's no day when you're regularly out?”

She, in turn, seemed to be striving to follow his train of thought and to answer accordingly.

“No. Except for laundry day, of course.”

“You don't do the laundry here?”

“Where could I do it? I have to go up to the ground floor for water. I can't hang up the washing in the workshop, and it wouldn't dry in a basement. Once a week in summer, and once a fortnight in winter, I go to the laundry boat on the Seine.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Square du Vert-Galant. You know, just below the Pont-Neuf. It takes me half a day. The next morning I go to fetch the washing, which is dry and ready to iron.”

Visibly, Maigret was relaxing, smoking his pipe with more pleasure, and his expression had become livelier.

“In fact, one day a week in summer, one day every two weeks in winter, Frans was alone here.”

“Not all day.”

“Did you go to the laundry boat in the morning or the afternoon?”

“Afternoon. I tried going in the morning, but it was difficult, on account of the cleaning and cooking.”

“Have you got a key to the house?”

“Of course.”

“Did you often have to use it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did it sometimes happen that when you came back your husband wasn't in the workshop?”

“Hardly ever.”

“But it did happen?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“Recently?”

She had just thought of it, too, for she hesitated.

“The week I went to Concarneau.”

“When's your laundry day?”

“Monday.”

“Did he come home long after you?”

“Not long. Maybe an hour.”

“Did you ask him where he'd been?”

“I never ask him anything. He's free. It's not my place to ask him questions.”

“You don't know whether he left the neighborhood? Weren't you worried?”

“I was at the door when he came back. I saw him get out of the bus on the corner of the rue des Francs-Bourgeois.”

“The bus coming from the center or from the Bastille?”

“From the center.”

“So far as I can tell from this photo, the two brothers are the same height?”

“Yes. Alfred looks slimmer because he has a thin face, but his body is more muscular. They're not alike in features, except that they both have red hair. But from behind, the resemblance is striking, and I've occasionally mistaken one for the other.”

“The times when you saw Alfred, how was he dressed?”

“That depended, I've told you so already.”

“Do you think he may have borrowed money from his brother?”

“I've thought of that, but it doesn't seem likely. Not in front of me, in any case.”

“On his last visit, wasn't he wearing a blue suit?”

She looked him in the eye. She had caught on.

“I'm almost sure he was wearing something dark, but gray rather than blue. When you live by artificial light, you don't pay much attention to colors.”

“How did you manage about money, you and your husband?”

“What money?”

“Did he give you housekeeping money every month?”

“No. When I ran out, I'd ask him for some.”

“He never protested?”

She turned slightly pink.

“He was absent minded. He always thought he'd given me money just the day before. And then he'd say in astonishment:

“‘What, again?'”

“What about your personal things, dresses and hats?”

“I don't spend much, as you know!”

It was her turn to put some questions to him, as if she had been waiting a long time for this moment.

Listen, chief inspector, I'm not very intelligent, but I'm not so stupid either. You've questioned me, your detectives have questioned me, and the journalists too, not to mention the tradesmen and the neighbors. A young gentleman of seventeen, who plays amateur detective, even stopped me in the street and asked me some questions he had written down in a little notebook.

“Once and for all, tell me honestly: do you think Frans is guilty?”

“Guilty of what?”

“You know perfectly well: of having killed a man and burned the body in the furnace?”

He hesitated. He could have given her any answer that came into his head, but he was determined to be honest.

“I have no idea.”

“In that case why is he being kept in prison?”

“In the first place, that's not my responsibility, but the examining magistrate's. And then you mustn't forget that all the circumstantial evidence is against him.”

“The teeth!” she flashed, with irony.

“And above all the bloodstains on the blue suit. Don't forget the suitcase that vanished either.”

“And that I never saw!”

“That doesn't make any difference. Other people saw it, at least a detective did. And then there's the fact that you were called out of town, as if by chance, at that very moment, by a fake telegram. Now, between ourselves, I admit that if it were up to me I'd prefer to let your husband go, but I'd hesitate to release him for the sake of his own safety. You saw what happened yesterday.”

“Yes. That's just what I'm thinking about.”

“Whether he's guilty or innocent, he seems to be in somebody's way.”

“Why did you bring me the photo of his brother?”

“Because, in spite of what you think, that man is quite a dangerous criminal.”

“Has he committed murder?”

“Probably not. That type of man hardly ever kills. But he's wanted by the police of three or four countries, and for more than fifteen years he's been living by stealing and swindling. Are you surprised?”

“No.”

“Did you suspect it?”