Friend of Madame Maigret (4 page)

“While you're working on the taxi drivers you might just inquire about a little incident that happened this morning. It hasn't anything to do with our case, but it intrigues me.”

Lucas wasn't prepared to be so sure that it had nothing to do with his case, for he was ready to connect the remotest, most fortuitous events with it. First thing every morning he had all the metropolitan police reports sent up to him to make sure they didn't contain anything that might come within his field of activity.

All alone in his office he was coping with an enormous load of work, of which the public, reading the papers and following the Steuvels case like a serial, had not the least inkling.

Maigret briefly sketched the episode of the lady in the white hat and the little boy.

“You might also ring the Ninth Arrondissement police. The fact that she was on the same bench in the place d'Anvers gardens every morning makes it seem likely that she lives in that neighborhood. Let them check the whole area, the tradesmen, the hotels, and boardinghouses.”

Check after check! In normal times you could sometimes find ten inspectors at a time smoking, preparing reports, reading newspapers, or even playing cards in the next office. Now you hardly ever saw two together. Scarcely had they come in than the Grand Turenne would open the door of his den.

“Are you free, son? Come in here a minute.”

And one or more of them would set off on a trail.

The vanished suitcase had been hunted in the parcels offices of all the stations and in all the junk shops.

Little Lapointe may have been inexperienced, but he was a responsible young man, incapable of making up a story.

On the morning of February 21, therefore, there must have been in Steuvels's workshop a suitcase that was no longer there when Lucas went there at five o'clock.

Yet so far as the neighbors could recollect, Steuvels had not left home that day, and no one had seen Fernande go out with a suitcase or a package.

Had anyone come to collect any binding work? This had also been “checked.” The Argentinian embassy had sent for a document for which Steuvels had created a sumptuous binding, but it was not bulky and the messenger had it under his arm when he left.

Martin, the most cultured man at Police Headquarters, had worked for almost a week in the bookbinder's shop, leafing through his books, studying the work he had turned out during the last few months, getting in touch with his customers by telephone.

“He's an amazing man,” was his conclusion. “He has the most select clientele you can imagine. They all have complete confidence in him. What's more, he works for several embassies.”

But this angle yielded nothing mysterious either. If the embassies entrusted their work to him it was because he was a specialist in heraldry and owned the stamps for a large number of coats of arms, which enabled him to bind books or documents emblazoned with the emblems of various countries.

“You don't look happy, chief. But you'll see, something will emerge out of all this in the end.”

And good old Lucas, who never lost heart, pointed to the hundreds of sheets of paper he was blithely accumulating.

“We found some teeth in the furnace, didn't we? They didn't get there all by themselves. And someone handed in a telegram at Concarneau to lure Steuvels's wife down there. The blue suit hanging in the wardrobe had human bloodstains on it that someone had tried unsuccessfully to remove. Maître Liotard can talk and carry on until he's blue in the face; he won't budge me on that.”

But all this paperwork, so intoxicating to the detective, weighed on the chief inspector, who stared at it with a glaucous eye.

“What are you thinking about, chief?”

“Nothing, I'm wondering.”

“About releasing him?”

“No. That's the examining magistrate's business.”

“Otherwise you'd have him released, wouldn't you?”

“I don't know. I'm wondering whether to start the whole case over again from the beginning.”

“Just as you like,” replied Lucas, slightly offended.

“That doesn't prevent you from going ahead with your work, far from it. If we wait too long we'll never get it straight. It's always the same: once the press interferes, everybody has something to say, and we're swamped.”

“All the same I've found the taxi driver, just as I'm going to find Madame Maigret's.”

The chief inspector filled a fresh pipe, opened the door. There wasn't a single detective in the next room. They had all gone off somewhere, busily occupied on the Fleming's case.

“Have you made up your mind?”

“I think so.”

He didn't even go into his own office, left the Quai des Orfèvres and immediately hailed a cab.

“Corner of the rue de Turenne and the rue des Francs-Bourgeois.”

Those words, which you kept hearing from morning to night, were becoming nauseating.

 

 

The residents of the neighborhood, for their part, had never had such a time. All of them, one after the other, had had their names in the paper. Shopkeepers, workmen, all they had to do was to drop into the Grand Turenne for a drink and they met the detectives, and if they went across the street to the Tabac des Vosges, which was famous for its white wine, they were greeted by the reporters.

Ten times, twenty times, they had been asked their opinion of Steuvels, of Fernande, and for details about their movements and behavior.

Since there wasn't even a corpse, for certain, but merely two teeth, the whole thing was not at all tragic and it seemed rather like a game.

Maigret got out of the cab opposite the Grand Turenne, glanced inside, saw no one from Headquarters, walked a few steps, and found himself in front of the bookbinder's workshop, where the shutters had been up and the door closed for the last three weeks. There was no bell, and he knocked, knowing that Fernande ought to be at home.

It was in the morning that she went out. Every day since the arrest of Frans, in fact, she would leave at ten o'clock, carrying three small casseroles that fitted onto one another and were held by a frame surmounted by a handle.

It was her husband's meal that she carried to the Santé Gaol in this way, by métro.

Maigret had to knock a second time and saw her emerge from the staircase that connected the workshop with the basement. She recognized him, turned round to speak to someone out of sight, and finally came to let him in.

She was in slippers and wore a check apron. Seeing her like this, a bit overweight, her face bare of makeup, no one would have recognized the woman who once walked the little streets adjoining the boulevard de Sébastopol. She looked for all the world like a domesticated woman, a meticulous housewife, and in normal times she was probably a cheerful soul.

“Is it me you want to see?” she asked, not without a suggestion of weariness.

“Is anyone with you?”

She did not answer, and Maigret walked over to the stairs, went down a few steps, leaned over, and frowned.

He had already been informed of the presence in the neighborhood of Alfonsi, who liked to drink an aperitif with the journalists in the Tabac des Vosges, but avoided setting foot in the Grand Turenne.

He was standing, very much at home, in the kitchen, where something was simmering on the stove, and even though he was slightly embarrassed he managed an ironical smile for the chief inspector.

“What are you doing here?”

“You can see for yourself: paying a visit, like you. I have a right to, haven't I?”

Alfonsi had been attached to Police Headquarters but not in Maigret's department. For a few years he had been in the Vice Squad, where it had finally been made clear to him that in spite of all his political pull he was unwanted.

Short in stature, he wore very high heels to make himself taller, possibly with a pack of cards inside his shoes, as some people hinted, and he was always dressed with exaggerated elegance, a big diamond, genuine or paste, on his finger.

He had opened a private detective agency, in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, of which he was both proprietor and sole employee, assisted only by a vague secretary who was primarily his mistress and with whom he was to be seen in the evenings in nightclubs.

When Maigret had been told of his presence in the rue de Turenne, the chief inspector had at first thought that the ex-detective was trying to pick up bits of information that he could later sell to newspapermen.

Then he had discovered that he was in the pay of Philippe Liotard.

It was the first time he had crossed his path in person, and he muttered:

“I'm waiting.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“For you to go.”

“That's too bad, because I'm not through yet.”

“Suit yourself.”

Maigret made as though to leave.

“What are you going to do?”

“Call one of my men and put a tail on you day and night. I have a right to do that, too.”

“All right! That's fine! No need to get nasty, Monsieur Maigret!”

He set off up the stairs, with an air of being quite at home in the underworld, winking at Fernande before he left.

“Does he come here often?” asked Maigret.

“This is the second time.”

“I advise you not to trust him.”

“I know. I know his type.”

Was this a discreet allusion to the days when she was at the mercy of the police in the Vice Squad?

“How's Steuvels?”

“All right. He reads all day long. He's confident.”

“And you?”

Was there really a hesitation?

“So am I.”

Nonetheless she was obviously rather weary.

“What books are you taking him now?”

“He's in the middle of re-reading Marcel Proust all the way through.”

“Have you read him too?”

“Yes.”

Steuvels had, in fact, educated the wife he had picked up long ago off the pavement.

“You mustn't think I've come to see you as an enemy. You know the situation as well as I do. I want to understand. At present, I don't understand. What about you?”

“I'm sure Frans hasn't committed any crime.”

“Do you love him?”

“That word doesn't mean anything. I'd need another word, a special one, which doesn't exist.”

He had gone up to the workshop again, where the bookbinder's tools were laid out on the long table facing the window. The presses were at the back, in semidarkness, and on the shelves books were waiting their turn among the work in progress.

“He had regular habits, didn't he? I'd like you to tell me as accurately as possible how he would spend a typical day.”

“Somebody else has asked me that already.”

“Who?”

“Maître Liotard.”

“Has it occurred to you that Maître Liotard's interests don't necessarily coincide with your own? He was unknown three weeks ago and what he is after is to get as much publicity for his own name as possible. It doesn't matter to him whether your husband is innocent or guilty.”

“Excuse me. If he proves his innocence, that will be a terrific boost for him and his reputation will be made.”

“And what if he obtains his release without having definitely proved his innocence? He'll make a name as a clever fellow. He'll be in great demand. They'll say of your husband:

“‘Lucky for him Liotard got him off!'

“In other words, the guiltier Steuvels appears, the more credit Liotard will get. Do you realize that?”

“Frans realizes it, certainly.”

“Did he say so?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn't he like Liotard? Why did he choose him?”

“He didn't choose him. It was he who . . .”

“One moment. You've just said something important.”

“I know.”

“Did you do it on purpose?”

“Maybe. I'm sick of all this fuss about us and I realize where it's coming from. It doesn't seem to me that I'm doing Frans any harm by saying what I'm saying.”

“When Sergeant Lucas came to make his search on February 21 at about five o'clock he didn't leave alone, but took your husband along with him.”

“And you questioned him all night,” she said reproachfully.

“That's my job. At that time Steuvels still had no lawyer because he didn't know he was going to be charged. And since then he hasn't been released. He came back here only for a very short time, accompanied by detectives. Yet when I told him to choose a lawyer he named Maître Liotard without any hesitation.”

“I see what you mean.”

“So the lawyer saw Steuvels here
before
Sergeant Lucas did?”

“Yes.”

“Therefore it must have been in the afternoon of the twenty-first, between the visit of Lapointe and that of the sergeant?”

“Yes.”

“Were you present at the interview?”

“No, I was downstairs doing a thorough cleaning because I'd been away three days.”

“You don't know what they said to each other? They hadn't met before?”

“No.”

“It wasn't your husband who telephoned to ask him to come?”

“I'm almost sure it wasn't.”

Some children of the neighborhood had their faces pressed against the window, and Maigret suggested:

“Wouldn't you rather we went downstairs?”

She led him through the kitchen, and they entered the little windowless room, which was very attractive, very cozy, with shelves of books all around, the table at which the couple had their meals and, in a corner, another table that served as a desk.