Friend of Madame Maigret (14 page)

“Anyway, whether that was the reason or not, it turned out nicely for me. How long is it since we did this?”

“Three weeks?” he suggested in all sincerity.

“Exactly two and a half months!”

They bickered a bit, in fun. And next morning, because of the sun, which was again brilliant and springlike, Maigret had sung in his bath. He had walked all the way to the Quai, through the almost-deserted streets, and it was always a pleasure to find the wide corridors of Police Headquarters with their doors standing open on vacant offices.

Lucas had only just arrived. Torrence was there too, as was Janvier; it wasn't long before little Lapointe appeared, but because it was Sunday they seemed to be working like amateurs. Perhaps also because it was Sunday, they left the communicating doors open, and from time to time, by way of music, they heard the bells of the local churches.

Lapointe had been the only one to bring in any new information. The previous night, before leaving, Maigret had asked him:

“By the way, where does that young journalist live who's carrying on with your sister?”

“He's stopped going out with her. You mean Antoine Bizard.”

“They've broken up?”

“I don't know. Perhaps I've scared him?”

“I'd like his address.”

“I don't know it. I know where he eats most of his meals and I doubt that my sister knows any more. I'll inquire from the newspaper offices.”

As he entered, he handed a slip of paper to Maigret. This was the address in question, rue Bergère, in the same block as Philippe Liotard.

“That's fine, son. Thanks,” the chief inspector had simply said, without adding any comment.

If it had been a bit warmer, he would have taken off his coat just for the sake of being in his shirtsleeves like people who potter around all day on Sunday, for pottering around was just what he felt like. All his pipes were lined up on his desk, and he had taken out of his pocket his fat black notebook that he always stuffed full of notes but practically never consulted.

Two or three times he had thrown into the wastepaper basket the big sheets on which he had scribbled. Ruled a set of columns to start with. Then changed his mind.

In the end his work had taken a turn for the better.

The date had been confirmed by the daytime hall porter. As for the car, the information had been furnished by one of the hotel carmen who had reported the time of departure as seven o'clock at night. He had added that the old lady seemed worried and that her son-in-law was hurrying her as if they were about to miss a train or an important appointment.

Still no trace of the countess. He went into Lucas's office to make sure; the sergeant was still receiving reports from all over the place.

The Italian journalists, the night before, had obtained only a few scraps of information from the police, had furnished a few themselves; they did in fact know Countess Panetti. The marriage of her only daughter, Bella, had caused a big stir in Italy, because, lacking her mother's consent, the girl had run away from home to get married at Monte Carlo.

That was five years ago, and since then the two women refused to meet.

If Krynker was in Paris, said the Italian journalists, it was probably to attempt another reconciliation.

 

In the margin Maigret had amused himself by drawing a woman's hat with a tiny veil.

 

In the margin, in red pencil, he wrote:
Is the third character Krynker?

 

Maigret stood up for a little stroll, a glance at the notes the inspectors were taking at the telephones. It wasn't time yet to have beer sent up, and he simply filled another pipe instead.

 

Thursday, February 22.

Friday, February 23.

Saturday . . .

A whole column of dates with nothing opposite them, except that the inquiry was dragging, the papers were agitating, Liotard, snapping like a cur, was attacking the police in general and Maigret in particular. The right-hand column remained empty until:

 

The page was ornamental, for Maigret was decorating it with drawings like a child's.

On another sheet he noted the dates on which they had lost track of the various characters.

The carman at Claridge's had been the last to see her, when she had stepped into her son-in-law's chocolate-colored Chrysler.

 

Maigret hesitated to write down the date Saturday, February 17, for they had no proof at all that he was the third person dropped by the taxi at the corner of the rue de Turenne.

If that were not he, his tracks disappeared simultaneously with the old lady's.

He had been the first to leave the Hôtel Beauséjour, about noon.

 

Half an hour after the preceding character, when he saw Gloria into a taxi.

 

Two hours later, in the crowd, at the Carrefour Montmartre.

Today was Sunday, March 17. Since the 12th there had been nothing new to report. Except for the investigation.

Or rather there was one date to note, which he added to the column:

But that was still in doubt. The experts had found no trace of poison. In the state of nervous exhaustion Fernande had been in recently, she might well have mistaken a passenger's clumsiness for a suspicious action.

In any case it wasn't Moss popping up again, for she would have recognized him.

Levine?

Suppose it was a message, and not poison, that someone had tried to slip into the casserole?

Maigret, with a sunbeam catching him in the face, made a few more little drawings, screwing up his eyes, then he went to look at a string of barges going past on the Seine, at the Pont Saint-Michel, with families dressed in their Sunday clothes crossing it.

Madame Maigret had probably gone back to bed, as she sometimes did on Sundays, simply to make it seem more like Sunday, for she was incapable of going back to sleep.

“Janvier! What about ordering some beer?”

Janvier rang the Brasserie Dauphine, where the
patron
asked as a matter of course:

“And some sandwiches?”

By means of a discreet telephone call, Maigret discovered that Judge Dossin, punctilious, was in his office; he too, no doubt, like the chief inspector, hoping to sort things out in peace.

“Still no news of the car?”

It was amusing to think that on this beautiful Sunday, which smelled of spring, in all the villages where people were emerging from Mass or from little cafés, hardworking policemen were keeping an eye on the cars and looking for the chocolate-colored Chrysler.

“May I look, chief?” asked Lucas, who had come to stretch his legs in Maigret's office between telephone calls.

He examined the chief inspector's work carefully, shook his head.

“Why didn't you ask me? I've drawn up the same diagram, in more detail.”

“But without the little drawings!” Maigret joked. “What's the leading item in the phone calls? Cars? Moss?”

“Cars for the moment. Lots of chocolate-colored cars. Unfortunately, when I pin them down, they're no longer exactly chocolate-colored, they turn reddish-brown, or else they're Citroëns, Peugeots. We check anyhow. The suburbs are beginning to phone in now, and the radius is expanding to about sixty miles from Paris.”

In a little while, thanks to the radio, all France would be in on it. There was nothing to do but wait, and that wasn't so disagreeable. The waiter from the café brought a huge tray covered with glasses of beer, piles of sandwiches, and there was every chance that he would make similar trips up before the day was out.

They were in the midst of eating and drinking and they had just opened the windows, for the sun was warm, when they saw Moers come in, blinking his eyes, as though he were emerging from a dark place.

They hadn't known he was in the building, where, theoretically, he had no business. Yet here he was coming from upstairs, where he must be the only person in the laboratories.

“I'm sorry to bother you.”

“A glass of beer? There's one left.”

“No thanks. As I was falling asleep, an idea kept bothering me. We were so sure that the blue suit unquestionably belonged to Steuvels that we examined it only for bloodstains. As the suit's still up there, I came in this morning to do an analysis of the dust.”

This was, in fact, a routine procedure, which no one had thought of in the present case. Moers had sealed each piece of clothing in a strong paper bag to which he had given a good beating, so as to extract every trace of dust from the cloth.

“You've found something?”

“Sawdust, very fine, in remarkable quantities. It's really more like wood powder.”

“The kind you might get in a sawmill?”

“No. That kind of sawdust would be less fine, less pervasive. This powder is produced by fine handiwork.”

“Cabinet work, for instance?”

“Possibly. I'm not sure. It's even finer than that, in my opinion, but before I commit myself I'd like to have a word with the laboratory chief tomorrow.”

Without waiting to hear the end, Janvier had picked up a volume of Bottin's Directory and was busy studying all the addresses in the rue de Turenne.