Friend of Madame Maigret (7 page)

“I don't know about noon.”

“During the morning then?”

“Someone called and asked for him about ten o'clock. The lady and the kid had been gone quite a while.”

“Who called?”

“I didn't ask him his name. An ordinary little man not very well dressed, a bit shabby.”

“French?”

“Certainly. I told him the room number.”

“He'd never been here before?”

“No one had ever called, except the nurse.”

“Did he have a southern accent?”

“More like a Paris accent. You know, the kind of man who stops you in the street trying to sell you fancy postcards or take you Lord knows where.”

“Did he stay long?”

“Well, he waited by himself while Monsieur Levine was getting ready to leave.”

“With his luggage?”

“How did you know? I was amazed to see him carrying his luggage out.”

“Did he have much?”

“Four suitcases.”

“Brown ones?”

“Nearly all suitcases are brown, aren't they? Anyhow, these were good quality, and at least two of them were real leather.”

“What did he say to you?”

“That he had to go away unexpectedly, that he'd be leaving Paris that day, but he'd be back in a little while for the child's things.”

“How much later did he come back?”

“About an hour. The lady was with him.”

“Weren't you surprised not to see the little boy?”

“So you know about that too?”

She was growing more cautious because she was beginning to suspect that the matter was of some importance, that the police knew more about it than Maigret wanted to tell her.

“All three of them stayed in the room quite a time and they were talking pretty loud.”

“As if they were quarrelling?”

“As if they were arguing at least.”

“In French?”

“No.”

“Did the Parisian take part in the conversation?”

“Not much. Anyhow, he went out first, and I didn't see him again. Then later Monsieur Levine and the lady left. As they passed me on their way out, he thanked me and told me he expected to be back in a few days.”

“Didn't it seem queer to you?”

“If you'd kept a hotel like this one for eighteen years, nothing would seem queer to you.”

“Did you clean up their room yourself afterward?”

“I helped the maid.”

“You didn't find anything?”

“Cigarette ends all over the place. He smoked more than fifty a day. American cigarettes. Newspapers too. He bought just about all the papers published in Paris.”

“No foreign newspapers?”

“No. I thought of that.”

“So you were curious?”

“One always likes to know what's going on.”

“What else?”

“The usual rubbish, a broken comb, torn underclothes . . .”

“Any initials?”

“No. It was the kid's underclothes.”

“Good quality?”

“Pretty good, yes. Better than I'm used to seeing around here.”

“I'll be back to see you again.”

“What for?”

“Because some details that escape you at present will certainly come back to you when you think it over. You've always been on good terms with the police, haven't you? The Hotels Section doesn't bother you too much?”

“I get you. But I don't know any more.”

“Good morning.”

He and Lapointe were back on the sunny pavement in the midst of the bustle.

“A little drink?” suggested the chief inspector.

“I don't drink.”

“You're quite right. Have you thought things over in the meantime?”

The young man realized that he wasn't talking about what they had just found out at the hotel.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I'll speak to her tonight.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“I have a friend who's a reporter on the same paper that printed that story this morning, but I didn't see him yesterday. Anyway, I never talk to him about what goes on at the Quai, and he often teases me about that.”

“Does your sister know him?”

“Yes. I didn't think they were going around together. If I tell my father, he'll make her go back to Meulan.”

“What's the reporter's name?”

“Bizard. Antoine Bizard. He's on his own in Paris too. His family lives in Corrèze. He's two years younger than me, and some of his articles carry his own byline already.”

“Do you meet your sister at lunchtime?”

“It depends. When I'm free and not too far from the rue du Bac I go to lunch with her in a snack bar near her office.”

“Go and meet her today. Tell her what we found out this morning.”

“Should I really?”

“Yes.”

“What if she passes this on too?”

“She will pass it on.”

“Is that what you want her to do?”

“Go ahead. But be sure to be nice to her. Don't let it look as if you're suspicious of her.”

“But I can't have her going out with a young man. My father told me to be sure . . .”

“Go on.”

Maigret walked down the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette just for the pleasure of walking and took a taxi only at the Faubourg Montmartre after dropping into a bar for a glass of beer.

“Quai des Orfèvres.”

Then he changed his mind, rapped on the glass.

“Go by way of the rue de Turenne.”

He saw Steuvels's shop with its door shut, as it was every morning now, for Fernande must have been on her way to the Santé with her set of casseroles.

“Stop a minute.”

Janvier was at the bar of the Grand Turenne and, recognizing him, gave him a wink. What new check-up had Lucas assigned to him? He was deep in conversation with the cobbler and two plasterers in white overalls, and the milky tint of their Pernods was recognizable even at a distance.

“Turn left. Drive through the place des Vosges and the rue de Birague.”

This meant passing the Tabac des Vosges, where Alfonsi was sitting alone at a little table near the window.

“Are you getting out?”

“Yes. Wait for me a minute.”

It was the Grand Turenne he entered, after all, to have a word with Janvier.

“Alfonsi's across the street. Have you seen any newspapermen over there this morning?”

“Two or three.”

“Know them?”

“Not all.”

“Have you got much more to do?”

“Nothing very serious. And if you have anything else for me, I'm free. I just wanted to talk to the cobbler.”

They were a good distance away from the group and were speaking in lowered voices.

“Something occurred to me just now, after I read the story. The old chap talks far too much, you know. He's determined to be somebody and he'd make things up if necessary. Besides, every time he finds something to tell it means a few drinks for him. Seeing that he lives right opposite Steuvels's studio and works in his window too, I asked him whether any women ever came to see the bookbinder.”

“What did he answer?”

“Not much. He remembers one old lady in particular; she must be rich and she comes in a limousine with a chauffeur in livery who carries her books in. Also, about a month ago, a very elegant young lady in a mink coat. Wait! I made a point of finding out if she only called once. He says no, she came again a couple of weeks ago, in a blue suit with a white hat. It was a day when the weather was very fine, and the paper apparently carried an article on the chestnut tree in the boulevard Saint-Germain.”

“We can trace that.”

“That's what I thought.”

“So she went down to the basement?”

“No. But I'm a bit suspicious. He's read the article too, that's obvious, and it's perfectly possible that he's making it all up just to get some attention. What do you want me to do?”

“Keep an eye on Alfonsi. Don't let him out of your sight all day. You're to make a list of the people he speaks to.”

“He mustn't know I'm tailing him?”

“It doesn't matter much if he does.”

“What if he speaks to me?”

“Answer him.”

Maigret went out with the smell of Pernod in his nostrils, and his cab dropped him at the Quai where he found Lucas in the middle of lunching off sandwiches. There were two glasses of beer on the desk, and the chief inspector took one of them without compunction.

“Torrence has just phoned. The postmistress thinks she remembers a customer with a white hat, but she can't swear she's the one who handed in the telegram. According to Torrence, even if she were dead certain, she wouldn't say so.”

“Is he coming back?”

“He'll be in Paris tonight.”

“Call the Urbaine taxi company, will you? There's another cab to be traced, possibly two.”

Had Madame Maigret, who had a fresh appointment with her dentist, left early, as on the other days, in order to spend a few minutes on the bench in the Place d'Anvers garden?

Maigret didn't go home to the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir for lunch. Lucas's sandwiches looked tempting, and he had some sent up from the Brasserie Dauphine for himself.

This was usually a good sign.

Young Lapointe, red-eyed and scruffy like somebody who has slept on a bench in a third-class waiting room, had given Maigret a look of such distress when the latter had entered the inspectors' office that the chief inspector had immediately taken him into his own room.

“The whole story of the Hôtel Beauséjour's in the paper,” said the young man lugubriously.

“That's good! I'd have been disappointed if it hadn't been.”

Then Maigret had deliberately begun to talk to him as he would have talked to one of the old hands, to Lucas or Torrence, for instance.

“There are some people we know practically nothing about, not even whether they've really played any part in the case. There's a woman, a little boy, a rather stout man, and another man who looks a bit seedy. Are they still in Paris? We don't know. If they are, they've probably split up. The woman only has to take off her white hat and get rid of the child and we can't recognize her any more. You see!”

“Yes, chief inspector. I think I understand. But all the same I don't like to think that my sister saw that fellow again last night.”

“You can worry about your sister later. Right now you're working with me. This morning's newspaper story will alarm them. There are two possibilities: either they'll lie low, if they've got somewhere to lie low, or they'll look for a safer hiding-place. In any case our only chance is if they do something to give themselves away.”

“Yes.”

Just at that point Judge Dossin telephoned to express his surprise at the newspaper's disclosures, and Maigret began to sum up the position again.

“Everybody's been alerted, Monsieur le Juge, the stations, the airports, the Hotels Section, the highway police. Moers, up in Criminal Records, is busy looking for photos which might correspond to our customers. We're questioning taxi drivers and, in case the gang have a car, garagemen too.”

“Do you think this has some connection with the Steuvels case?”

“It's a lead, after so many others that haven't got us anywhere.”

“I'm having Steuvels brought up this morning at eleven. His lawyer will be here, as usual, because he won't let me exchange two words with him except in his presence.”

“Will you permit me to come up for a minute during your interrogation?”

“Liotard will protest, but come up anyway. Don't let it look as if we'd planned it.”

The curious thing was that Maigret had never met this Liotard, who had become, in the Press at all events, something like his special enemy.

This morning all the papers again carried the young lawyer's comments on the latest angles of the case.

 

“Stay here with me, son,” the chief inspector was saying to young Lapointe. “Only, tonight, before you go home, ask me what you may tell your sister, won't you?”

“I'll never tell her anything again.”

“You'll tell her what I ask you to tell her.”

And from then on Lapointe acted as his aide-de-camp. That really meant what it said, for Police Headquarters was becoming more and more like a military base.

The office of Lucas, the Grand Turenne, represented the command post, to which runners made their way from all floors. Downstairs, in the Hotels Section, several men were busy going through registration forms in search of a Levine or anybody else who might be connected with the trio and the child.