Friend of Madame Maigret (6 page)

“No. My father's a bank clerk, at Meulan, and he had a hard time bringing us up decently, my sisters and myself.”

“Are you in love?”

He didn't blush, didn't seem embarrassed.

“No. Not yet. I still have time. I'm only twenty-four and I don't want to get married before I'm settled.”

“Do you live by yourself in a furnished room?”

“Fortunately not. My youngest sister, Germaine, is in Paris too. She works for a publisher on the Left Bank. We share a place, and at night she has time to cook for us, and that's a saving.”

“Has she a young man?”

“She's only eighteen.”

“The first time you went to the rue de Turenne did you come straight back here?”

He suddenly blushed, hesitated a moment before replying.

“No,” he finally admitted. “I was so proud and happy at having discovered something that I treated myself to a taxi and went around to the rue du Bac to tell Germaine about it.”

“That's all, my boy. Thanks.”

Lapointe, uneasy, worried, was reluctant to leave.

“Why did you ask me that?”

“I'm the one who asks the questions, aren't I? Later on maybe you'll get a chance to do some interrogating too. You were in Sergeant Lucas's office yesterday when he telephoned the Ninth Arrondissement?”

“I was in the next office, and the door between them was open.”

“What time did you talk to your sister?”

“How do you know I did?”

“Answer me.”

“She stops work at five. She waited for me, as she often does, at the Bar de la Grosse Horloge, and we had a drink together before going home.”

“Were you with her all evening?”

“She went to the pictures with a girlfriend.”

“Did you see her girlfriend?”

“No. But I know her.”

“That's all. You can go.”

He would have liked to offer a bit more explanation, but someone came to tell the chief inspector that a taxi driver was asking to see him. This was a big, red-faced man of around fifty who must have driven a hackney carriage in his younger days and who, to judge by his breath, had certainly swallowed several glasses of white wine for the good of his stomach before coming in.

“Inspector Lamballe told me to come and see you about the young lady.”

“How did he find out that it was you whose fare she was?”

“I'm usually in the rank in the place Pigalle, and he came over for a word with me last night, the same as he had a word with all of us. It was me who picked her up.”

“What time? Where?”

“It must have been about one o'clock. I was finishing my lunch at a restaurant in the rue Lepic. My cab was outside. I saw a couple leaving the hotel opposite, and the woman immediately made a dash for my taxi. She seemed to be disappointed when she saw the flag was down. Since I'd got as far as my liqueur, I stood up and called across the street to her to wait.”

“What was her companion like?”

“A fat little man, very well dressed, like a foreigner. Between forty and fifty, I can't say exactly. I didn't look at him much. He was turned toward her and was talking to her in a foreign language.”

“What language?”

“I don't know. I come from Pantin and I've never been able to tell one lingo from another.”

“What address did she give?”

“She was jumpy, impatient. She asked me to go to the place d'Anvers first and slow down. She was looking out of the window.

“Then she said, ‘Stop a minute and drive on again when I tell you.'

“She was beckoning to somebody. A motherly old soul was walking toward us with a little boy. The lady opened the door, pulled the kid in, and ordered me to drive on.”

“Didn't it look to you like a kidnapping?”

“No, because she spoke to the lady. Not for long. Just a few words. And the lady seemed more relieved than anything else.”

“Where did you take the mother and child?”

“First to the Porte de Neuilly. There she changed her mind and asked me to drive to the Gare Saint-Lazare.”

“Did she get out there?”

“No. She stopped me in the place Saint-Augustin. Due to the fact that I got caught in a traffic jam there, I saw her in my mirror hailing another cab, one of the Urbaine's, but I didn't have time to get its number.”

“Did you try to?”

“Out of habit. She was really in a state. And it was a bit queer, after taking me all the way to the Porte de Neuilly, to stop me on the place Saint-Augustin just to get into another cab.”

“Did she talk to the child on the way?”

“A sentence or two, to keep him quiet. Is there a reward?”

“Maybe. I don't know yet.”

“You see, I've wasted my morning.”

Maigret handed him a note and a few minutes later was pushing open the door of the director of Police Headquarters, where the conference had begun. The department heads were there, grouped round the big mahogany desk, talking quietly about current cases.

“What about you, Maigret? And your Steuvels?”

From their smiles it was obvious that they had all read the morning's story; once more, and again just to please them, he pretended to be disgruntled.

It was half past nine. The telephone rang, the director answered, handed the receiver to Maigret.

“Torrence wants to speak to you.”

Torrence's voice at the other end of the line was excited.

“Is that you, chief? You haven't found the lady in the white hat? The Paris paper's just arrived, and I've read the story. Well, the description fits someone I'm on the track of here.”

“Go on.”

“Since there's no way of getting anywhere with the fool of a postmistress here, who claims she can't remember a thing, I started a search in the hotels, the boardinghouses, questioning garagemen and railway station employees.”

“I know.”

“The season hasn't started yet, and most of the people arriving at Concarneau are local residents or people who are more or less familiar, commercial travelers and . . .”

“Make it short.”

For conversation had been broken off all around him.

“I was thinking that if someone had come from Paris or somewhere else in order to send off the telegram . . .”

“Yes, I see all that.”

“Well, there's a young lady in a blue suit and a white hat who arrived the very evening the telegram was sent off. She came in by the four o'clock train, and the message was handed in at a quarter to five.”

“Did she have any luggage?”

“No. Wait. She didn't stop at the hotel. Do you know the Hôtel du Chien Jaune down by the pier? She had dinner there and sat around in a corner of the café until eleven o'clock. In other words, she left again on the 11:40 train.”

“Have you verified that?”

“I haven't had time yet, but I'm certain of it because she left the café at exactly the right time, and she had asked for the railway timetable immediately after dinner.”

“Didn't she speak to anyone?”

“Only to the waitress. She read the whole time, even while she was eating.”

“Have you been able to find out what kind of book she was reading?”

“No. The waitress maintains that she had a foreign accent, but she doesn't know what it was. What shall I do?”

“Go back and see the postmistress, of course.”

“And after that?”

“Ring me or ring Lucas if I'm not in the office, then come back.”

“All right, chief. Do you think it's the same woman, too?”

When he hung up Maigret had a little spark of glee in his eye.

“Maybe Madame Maigret will have put us on the track,” he said. “Will you excuse me, chief? I have some urgent checking to do myself.”

By chance Lapointe was still in the inspectors' office, visibly worried.

“You there, come with me!”

They took one of the taxis from the rank on the Quai, and young Lapointe still didn't feel any more confident, for it was the first time the chief inspector had taken him out with him like this.

“Corner of the place Blanche and the rue Lepic.”

It was the time of day when, in Montmartre, and especially in the rue Lepic, barrows were lined up along the pavements, piled high with vegetables and fruit fragrant with the smell of soil and springtime.

Maigret recognized on his left the little
table d'hôte
restaurant where the taxi driver had had lunch and, opposite, the Hôtel Beauséjour, only the narrow doorway of which was visible between two shops, a delicatessen and a grocer's.

There was a glass door at the end of the corridor, then a staircase with a sign on the wall:
Office.
A hand drawn in black ink pointed upstairs.

The office was on the first floor, a narrow room facing the street, with keys hanging on a board.

“Anyone there?” he called.

The smell reminded him of the time when he was just about Lapointe's age, in the Hotels Section, and used to spend his days going from one boardinghouse to another. It smelled of a mixture of washing and sweat, unmade beds, slop pails and food being warmed up on spirit lamps.

A slatternly woman with red hair leaned over the bannisters.

“What is it?”

Then, all at once, realizing that it was the police, she snapped crossly:

“I'm coming!”

She took her time upstairs, moving buckets and brooms; finally she appeared, buttoning her blouse over her protruding bosom. At close range, her hair proved to be almost white at the roots.

“What's the matter? They checked here only yesterday, and I have nothing but quiet tenants. You're not from the Hotels lot, are you?”

Without answering he described to her, so far as the taxi-driver's testimony permitted, the companion of the lady with the white hat.

“Do you know him?”

“I may. I'm not sure. What's his name?”

“That's just what I'd like to know.”

“Do you want to see my book?”

“First I want you to tell me whether you have a tenant who looks like him.”

“Nobody except Monsieur Levine.”

“Who's he?”

“I don't know. A very decent man, anyhow, who paid for a week in advance.”

“Is he still here?”

“No. He left yesterday.”

“Alone?”

“With the little boy, of course.”

“And the lady?”

“You mean the nurse?”

“Just a minute. Let's begin at the beginning so as to save time.”

“That'll suit me fine, because I haven't any to spare. What's Monsieur Levine done?”

“Just answer my questions, will you? When did he arrive?”

“Four days ago. You can check in my book. I told him I hadn't got a vacant room, and it was true. He insisted. I asked him how long for, and he told me he'd pay for a week in advance.”

“How could you accommodate him if you had no room?”

Maigret knew the answer, but he wanted to make her say it. In this kind of hotel the first-floor rooms are generally reserved for occasional couples coming in for a few minutes or an hour.

“There are always the 'casuals' rooms,” she replied, using the traditional term.

“Was the child with him?”

“Not at the time. He went to fetch him and came back with him an hour later. I asked him how he was going to manage with such a young child, and he told me that a nursemaid he knew would take care of him most of the day.”

“Did he show you his passport, his identity card?”

According to regulations, she ought to have asked for these documents, but she obviously hadn't complied.

“He filled out his slip himself. I saw at once that he was a respectable man. Are you going to make trouble for me just for that?”

“Not necessarily. How was the nurse dressed?”

“In a blue suit.”

“With a white hat?”

“Yes. She would come in the morning to bathe the kid and then take him out.”

“And Monsieur Levine?”

“He would hang around in his room until eleven or twelve o'clock. I think he went back to bed. Then he would go out, and I wouldn't see him again all day.”

“Or the child?”

“Nor him either. Not much before seven o'clock at night. It was she who would bring him back and put him to bed. She would lie down on the bed fully dressed while she waited for Monsieur Levine to come home.”

“What time did he come in?”

“Not before one in the morning.”

“Would she leave then?”

“Yes.”

“You don't know where she lived?”

“No. I only know that she took a cab when she left, because I saw her.”

“Was she intimate with your tenant?”

“You mean did they sleep together? I'm not sure. From certain signs I think they did sometimes. They have a right to, haven't they?”

“What nationality did Monsieur Levine put on his slip?”

“French. He told me he'd been in France a long time and was naturalized.”

“Where did he come from?”

“I don't remember. Your Hotels man called for the slips yesterday, as usual on Tuesdays. From Bordeaux, if I'm not mistaken.”

“What happened yesterday at noon?”