Friend of Madame Maigret (8 page)

The previous night, in most boardinghouses, the guests had had the unpleasant surprise of being awakened by the police, who had examined their identity documents; this had resulted in some fifty men and women whose papers were not in order spending the rest of the night at the Depot, where they were now queuing up for the identification parade.

In the railway stations travelers were being scrutinized without their knowing it, and two hours after the papers came out, the telephone calls began, soon becoming so numerous that Lucas had to detail an inspector for this job.

People had seen the little boy all over the place, in the most widely separated parts of Paris and the suburbs; some said, with the lady in the white hat, some, with the gentleman with the foreign accent.

Pedestrians would suddenly rush up to a policeman.

“Hurry! The child's at the corner of the street.”

Everything was checked, everything had to be checked if no chance was to be overlooked. Three detectives had gone out first thing to interrogate garagemen.

And all night long the men of the Society Section had been on the job too. Hadn't the manageress of the Beauséjour said that her visitor hardly ever came home before one o'clock.

It was a question of finding out if he was a regular patron of nightclubs, of interrogating barmen, dance hostesses.

Maigret, after attending the conference in the Chief's office, was prowling about the building, with Lapointe at his side most of the time, going down to the Hotels Section, up to Moers in Criminal Records, taking a telephone call here, a statement there.

It was just after ten o'clock when a driver from the Urbaine Company phoned. He hadn't rung up earlier because he had made a trip out of town, to Dreux, to take an old invalid lady who did not want to go by train.

It was he who had picked up the young lady and the little boy in the place Saint-Augustin, he remembered it perfectly well.

“Where did you take them to?”

“The corner of the rue Montmartre and the Grands Boulevards.”

“Was there anyone waiting for them?”

“I didn't notice anyone.”

“You don't know which way they went?”

“I lost sight of them straight away in the crowd.”

There were several hotels in the vicinity.

“Ring the Hotels boys again!” said Maigret to Lapointe. “Tell them to go over the sector around the Carrefour Montmartre with a fine comb. Do you realize now that if they don't lose their heads, if they don't budge, we haven't the remotest chance of finding them?”

Torrence, back from Concarneau, had gone for a stroll down the rue de Turenne, to get back into the feel of it, as he said.

As for Janvier, he had sent in a report on his shadowing job and was still on Alfonsi's heels.

The latter had joined Philippe Liotard the night before in a restaurant on the rue Richelieu, where they had had a good dinner, chatting quietly. Two women had joined them later, who bore no resemblance to the young lady in the white hat. One was the lawyer's secretary, a big blonde with the look of a film starlet. The other had left with Alfonsi.

They had both gone to the cinema, near the Opéra, then to a nightclub on the rue Blanche where they had remained until two o'clock in the morning.

After which, the ex-detective had taken his companion to the hotel where he lived in the rue de Douai.

Janvier had taken a room at the same hotel. He had just phoned:

“They're not up yet. I'm waiting.”

A little before eleven o'clock Lapointe, following Maigret, was to be introduced to a region of the Quai des Orfèvres that was unknown to him, on the ground floor. They had gone down a long deserted corridor, the windows of which overlooked the courtyard, and, reaching a corner, Maigret had made a sign to the young man to keep quiet.

A police van, passing under the entrance gate to the Depot, was entering the yard. Three or four policemen were waiting, smoking cigarettes. Two others got out of the Black Maria, from which they unloaded first a great brute of a man with a low forehead, handcuffs on his wrists. Maigret didn't know him. This one hadn't crossed his path.

Next came a fragile-looking old lady who might have been the chairwoman in a church, but whom he had arrested at least twenty times as a pickpocket. She followed her policeman like an old-timer, trotting along with little steps in her extra-wide skirts, knowing the right turnings to take to reach the examining magistrate's offices.

The sun was bright, the air steely blue in the patches of shade, with whiffs of springtime, a few newly hatched flies buzzing.

Frans Steuvels's red head appeared, bare of hat or cap; his suit was rather crumpled. He stopped, as though surprised by the sun, and one guessed that his eyes were half-closed behind his thick glasses.

He had been handcuffed, just like the brute: a regulation strictly enforced since several prisoners had escaped from this very yard, the latest of them by way of the corridors of the Palais de Justice.

With his hunched back, his flabby figure, Steuvels was typical of those intellectual craftsmen who read everything that comes their way and have no consuming interest outside their work.

One of the guards handed him a lighted cigarette, and he thanked him, took a few drags on it with satisfaction, filling his lungs with air and tobacco.

He must have been easy to handle, because they were treating him kindly, they gave him time to stretch his legs before taking him over to the building, and he for his part seemed not to bear his warders any ill will, showed no rancour, no hysteria.

There was a slight basis of truth in Maître Liotard's interview. Normally Maigret himself would have followed his investigation through to the end before turning the man over to the examining magistrate.

If it had not been for the lawyer, who had appeared on the scene as soon as the first interrogation was over, Maigret would have seen Steuvels several more times, which would have given him a chance to study him.

He hardly knew him, having been alone with the bookbinder only for ten or twelve hours, at a time when he still knew nothing about him or about the case.

Rarely had he been confronted with a prisoner so calm, so much in control of himself, without there being any indication that this was an assumed attitude.

Steuvels would wait for the questions, head down, with an air of trying to understand, and he watched Maigret as he would have watched a lecturer developing complicated ideas.

Then he would take time to think, answer in a gentle, rather faint voice, in carefully chosen phrases, but without any trace of affectation.

He did not get impatient like most prisoners, and when the same question came up for the twentieth time he would reply in the same terms, with remarkable equanimity.

Maigret would have liked to get to know him better but for the last three weeks the man hadn't belonged to him anymore but to Dossin, who would have him brought up, with his lawyer, twice a week on an average.

Fundamentally Steuvels must have been a shy man. The odd thing was that the judge was a shy man too. Noticing the initial G. before his name, the chief inspector had once made so bold as to ask him his Christian name, and the tall, distinguished magistrate had blushed.

“Don't tell anyone or they'll start calling me the Angel again, as my fellow students did at college and later in law school too. My Christian name is Gabriel!”

“Come on now,” Maigret was saying to Lapointe. “I want you to go and sit in my office and take all messages while you're waiting for me.”

He did not go upstairs straight away, wandered about the corridors a bit, his pipe between his teeth, his hands in his pockets, like a man who feels at home, shaking a hand here, another there.

When he felt sure that the interrogation was under way, he went up to the examining magistrates' wing and knocked at Dossin's door.

“May I?”

“Come in, chief inspector.”

A man had risen to his feet, small and slim, very slim, too deliberately well dressed, whom Maigret instantly recognized from having seen his photographs in the papers. He was young and put on a pompous manner in order to seem older, affecting a self-assurance which did not match his age.

Quite handsome, with a sallow complexion and black hair, he had long nostrils which quivered occasionally, and he would stare people in the eye as though determined to make them look away.

“Monsieur Maigret, I suppose?”

“None other, Maître Liotard.”

“If it's me you're looking for, I'll be glad to see you after the interrogation.”

Frans Steuvels, who had remained seated, facing the judge, was waiting. He had merely glanced at the chief inspector, then at the police clerk at the end of the desk, who still had his pen in his hand.

“I'm not looking for you particularly. I'm looking for a chair, if you want to know.”

He picked one up by its back and straddled it, still smoking his pipe.

“Do you intend to stay here?”

“Unless Monsieur le Juge asks me to leave.”

“Do stay, Maigret.”

“I protest. If the interrogation is going to be conducted in these circumstances, I object strenuously, on the grounds that the presence of a member of the police in this office obviously tends to affect my client.”

Maigret refrained from muttering: “Make your little song and dance!”

And he watched the young lawyer with an ironical expression. The latter was obviously not in earnest over a word he was saying. It was part of his system. In every interrogation so far he had precipitated incidents, for the most futile or extravagant reasons.

“There's no regulation to prevent an officer of Police Headquarters from being present at an interrogation. So if you don't mind, we'll go on where we left off.”

All the same Dossin was influenced by Maigret's presence and he took a little while to find his place in his notes.

“I was asking you, Steuvels, if you are in the habit of buying your clothes ready made or if you have a tailor.”

“It depends,” the prisoner replied after reflecting.

“On what?”

“I hardly bother about the way I dress at all. When I need a suit, I sometimes get it ready made, but I've also had them made for me.”

“By which tailor?”

“I had a suit cut several years ago by a neighbor, a Polish Jew, who has since disappeared. I think he went to America.”

“Was it a blue suit?”

“No. It was gray.”

“How long did you wear it?”

“Two or three years. I forget.”

“And your blue suit?”

“It must be ten years since I bought a blue suit.”

“But the neighbors saw you dressed in blue not so long ago.”

“They must have confused my suit with my overcoat.”

It was true that a navy blue overcoat had been found in the flat.

“When did you buy this overcoat?”

“Last winter.”

“Isn't it unlikely that you would buy a blue overcoat if your only suit was brown? The two colors don't match particularly well.”

“I don't try to be smart.”

All this time Maître Philippe Liotard was staring at Maigret with a look of defiance so intense that he seemed to be trying to hypnotize him. Then, just as he would have done in court to impress the jury, he shrugged his shoulders, a sarcastic smile on his lips.

“Why don't you admit that the suit found in the wardrobe belongs to you?”

“Because it doesn't.”

“How do you account for someone having managed to put it in that place, seeing that you practically never leave your house and your room can be reached only by going through the workshop?”

“I don't explain it.”

“Let's be reasonable, Monsieur Steuvels. I'm not trying to trap you. This is the third time at least that we've tackled this subject. According to you, somebody entered your home, unknown to you, to place two human teeth in the ashes of your furnace. Note that this person chose the day when your wife was absent and that in order to make sure she would be absent he had to go to Concarneau—or send an accomplice—to dispatch a telegram about her mother's illness. Wait! That's not all.

“Not only were you alone at home, which is hardly ever the case, but furthermore, that day and the following one, you had such a big fire going in the furnace that you had to carry the ashes out to the dustbins seven times.

“On this point we have the evidence of your concierge, Madame Salazar, who has no reason to lie and who is in a good position, in her lodge, to keep an eye on the comings and goings of her tenants. On Sunday morning you made five trips, each time with a big bucket full of ashes.

“She thought you had been doing some spring cleaning and burning old papers.

“We have more evidence, from Madame Béguin who lives on the top floor and who states that your chimney smoked incessantly all day Sunday. Black smoke, she specified. At one point she opened her window and noticed an unpleasant smell.”

“Isn't the old Béguin girl, who is sixty-eight, generally regarded in the neighborhood as not quite all there?” the lawyer interrupted, crushing out his cigarette in the ashtray and taking another from a silver case. “May I also point out that for four days, as the weather reports for February 15, 16, 17, and 18 prove, the temperature in Paris and its surroundings was abnormally low?”

“That doesn't explain the teeth. Nor does that explain the presence of the blue suit in the wardrobe or the bloodstains found on it.”

“You're making the charge and it's up to you to prove it. But you're not even able to prove that the suit actually belongs to my client.”