My Friend Maigret

MY FRIEND MAIGRET

GEORGES JOSEPH CHRISTIAN SIMENON
was born on February 12, 1903 in Liège, Belgium. He began work as a reporter for a local newspaper at the age of sixteen, and at nineteen he moved to Paris to embark on a career as a novelist. He started by writing pulp-fiction novels and novellas published, under various pseudonyms, from 1923 onwards. He went on to write seventy-five Maigret novels and twenty-eight Maigret short stories.

Although Simenon is best known in Britain as the writer of the Maigret books, his prolific output of over four hundred novels made him a household name and institution in Continental Europe, where much of his work is constantly in print. The dark realism of Simenon's books has lent them naturally to screen adaptation.

Simenon died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

“You were standing in the doorway of your club?”

“Yes, officer.”

It was no good remonstrating with him. Four or five times Maigret had tried to make him say “inspector.” What did it matter anyway? What did all this matter?

“A gray sports car stopped for a moment and a man got out, with a flying leap almost, that's what you said, isn't it?”

“Yes, officer.”

“To get into your club he must have passed close to you and even brushed against you. Now there's a luminous neon sign above the door.”

“It's purple, officer.”

“So what?”

“So nothing.”

“Just because your sign is purple you are incapable of recognizing the individual who a moment later tore aside the velvet curtain and emptied his revolver into your barman?”

The man was called Caracci or Caraccini (Maigret was obliged to consult the dossier each time). He was short, but with high heels, a Corsican head (they still bear a faint resemblance to Napoleon), and he wore an enormous yellow diamond on his finger.

This had been going on since eight o'clock in the morning and it was now striking eleven. In actual fact it had been going on since the middle of the night, as all the people who had been rounded up in the Rue Fontaine, at the club where the barman had been shot down, had spent the night in the police station. Three or four detectives, including Janvier and Torrence, had already been working on Caracci, or Caraccini, without getting anything out of him.

It was May, but for all that the rain was falling as in the heaviest of autumn downpours. It had been raining like this since four or five o'clock, and the roofs, window ledges, and umbrellas made reflections similar to the water of the Seine, which the chief inspector could see by twisting his neck.

Mr. Pyke did not move. He remained seated on his chair, in a corner, as rigid as if he were in a waiting room, and it was beginning to be exasperating. His eyes travelled slowly from the chief inspector to the little man and from the little man to the chief inspector, without it being possible to guess what was going on in his English official's mind.

“You realize, Caracci, that your attitude could cost you dear, and that your club might well be closed down for good and all?”

The Corsican, unimpressed, gave Maigret a conspiratorial wink, smiled, smoothed the ends of his black mustache with his ringed finger.

“I've always gone straight, officer. Try asking your colleague, Priollet.”

Although there was a corpse, it was actually Chief Inspector Priollet, chief of the Vice Squad, that the case concerned, owing to the particular circumstances in which it had all started. Unfortunately Priollet was in the Jura at the funeral of some relation.

“In short, you refuse to speak?”

“I don't refuse, officer.”

Maigret, heavily, looking disgruntled, went and opened the door.

“Lucas! Work on him a bit longer.”

Oh, the way Mr. Pyke stared at him! Mr. Pyke might be the nicest man on earth, but there were moments when Maigret caught himself hating him. Exactly the same as with his brother-in-law, who was called Mouthon. Once a year in the spring, Mouthon got off the train at the Gare de l'Est with his wife, who was Madame Maigret's sister.

He, too, was the nicest man on earth; he would never have hurt a fly. As for his wife, she was gaiety personified, and from the moment she arrived in the flat in the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, she would call for an apron to help with the housework. On the first day it was perfect. The second day, it was almost as perfect.

“We're leaving tomorrow,” Mouthon would then announce.

“I won't hear of it!” Madame Maigret would protest. “Why leave so soon?”

“Because we'll be getting in your way.”

“Not on your life!”

Maigret would also declare with conviction:

“Not on your life!”

On the third day, he would hope that some unexpected job would prevent his dining at home. Now never, since his sister-in-law had married Mouthon and the couple had been coming to see them every year, never, ever, had one of those cases which keep you out of doors for days and nights on end cropped up at that moment.

From the fifth day onwards his wife and he would exchange agonized glances, and the Mouthons would stay for nine days, invariably pleasant, charming, thoughtful, as discreet as could be, so that one felt more guilty than ever for coming to detest them.

It was the same with Mr. Pyke. However, it was now only three days that he had been accompanying Maigret wherever he went. One day, during the holidays, they had said to Mouthon, idly:

“Why not come and spend a week in Paris, in the spring? We have a guest room which is always empty.”

They had come.

Similarly, a few weeks back, the Chief of Police had paid an official visit to the Lord Mayor of London. The latter had had him shown round the offices of the famous Scotland Yard, and the chief had been agreeably surprised to discover that the senior officers of the English police knew Maigret by repute and were interested in his methods.

“Why don't you come and see him at work?” the worthy man had said.

They had taken him at his word. Just like the Mouthons. They had sent over Inspector Pyke, and for the last three days the latter had followed Maigret about everywhere, as discreet, as self-effacing as could be. He was nonetheless there.

In spite of his thirty-five or forty years he looked so young that he reminded one of a serious-minded student. He was certainly intelligent, perhaps even acutely so. He looked, listened, reflected. He reflected so much that one seemed to be able to hear him reflecting, and it was beginning to be wearing.

It was a little as though Maigret had been placed under observation. All his acts, all his words were carefully sifted in the cranium of the impassive Mr. Pyke.

For three days now there had been nothing interesting to do. Just routine. Red tape. Uninteresting interrogations, like the one with Caracci.

They had come to understand one another, Pyke and he, without anything being said. For example, the moment the nightclub owner had been led off to the sergeants' room, where the door had been carefully closed, there was no mistaking the question in the Englishman's eyes:

“Rough stuff?”

Probably, yes. You don't put on velvet gloves to deal with people like Caracci. So what? It was of no importance. The case was without interest. If the barman had been done in it was probably because he hadn't been playing straight, or because he had belonged to a rival gang. Periodically, these characters settle their accounts, kill one another off, and in the long run, it is a good riddance.

Whether Caracci talked or held his peace, there would sooner or later be someone who would take the bait, very likely a police informer. Did they have informers in England?

“Hallo!…Yes…It's me…Who?…Lechat?…Don't know him…Where do you say he's calling from?…Porquerolles? Put him through…”

The Englishman's eye was still riveted upon him like the eye of God in the story of Cain.

“Hallo!…I can't hear very well…Lechat?…Yes…Right…I got that…Porquerolles…I got that too…”

With the receiver to his ear he was looking at the rain which was streaming down the windowpanes and thinking that there must be sunshine at Porquerolles, a small island in the Mediterranean off Hyères and Toulon. He had never been there, but he had often been told about it. People came back from it as brown as Bedouins. In fact it was the first time anyone had telephoned him from an island and he told himself that the telephone wires must pass under the sea.

“Yes…What?…A short fair-haired fellow, at Luçon?…Ah yes, I remember…”

He had met an Inspector Lechat when, as a result of some rather complicated administrative postings, he had been sent for a few months to Luçon, in the Vendée.

“You're at present with the flying squad at Draguignan, right. And you're ringing from Porquerolles…”

There was a crackling noise on the line. Every now and then the girls could be heard interrupting from one town to another.

“Hallo! Paris…Paris…Hallo! Paris…Paris…”

“Hallo! Toulon…Are you Toulon, dearie? Hallo! Toulon…”

Did the telephone work better on the other side of the channel? Impassive, Mr. Pyke listened and looked at him, and for appearances' sake Maigret toyed with a pencil.

“Hallo!…Do I know a Marcellin?…What Marcellin?…What?…A fisherman?…Try to make yourself clear, Lechat…I can't understand what you're talking about…A character who lives in a boat…Right…Go on…He claims to be a friend of mine?…What?…He used to claim?…He's dead?…He was killed last night?…That's nothing to do with me, Lechat, old man…It's not my area…He had talked about me all evening?…And you say that is why he's dead?…”

He had dropped his pencil and was trying, with his free hand, to relight his pipe.

“I'm making a note, yes…Marcel…It's not Marcellin anymore…As you say…
P
for Paul…
A
for Arthur…
C
for cinema…yes…Pacaud…You've sent off fingerprints?…A letter from me?…Are you sure?…Headed paper?…What heading?…Brasserie des Ternes. It's possible…And what did I say?…”

If only Mr. Pyke hadn't been there and hadn't been looking at him so earnestly!

“I'm writing it down, yes…‘Ginette leaves tomorrow for the sanatorium. She sends her love. Sincerely…' It's signed Maigret?…No, it's not necessarily a forgery…I seem to remember something…I'll go and look in the files…Go down there?…You know perfectly well it's no business of mine…”

He was just going to hang up, but he couldn't resist asking one question, at the risk of shocking Mr. Pyke.

“Is the sun shining down there?…Mistral?…But there's sun as well?…Okay…If I've any news I'll call you back…I promise…”

If Mr. Pyke asked few questions, he had a way of looking at you that obliged Maigret to speak.

“You know the island of Porquerolles?” he said, lighting his pipe. “It's supposed to be very beautiful, as beautiful as Capri and the Greek islands. A man was killed there last night, but it's not in my district. They found a letter from me in his boat.”

“It really was from you?”

“Quite likely. The name Ginette seems to ring a bell. Are you coming upstairs with me?”

Mr. Pyke already knew all the departments of Police Headquarters, which he had been shown round. One behind the other they walked up to the attics, where files are kept on everyone who has had dealings with the police. On account of the Englishman, Maigret was suffering from a sort of inferiority complex, and he was ashamed of the antiquated clerk in long gray overalls, who was sucking cough drops.

“Tell me, Langlois…By the way, is the wife better?”

“It's not the wife, Monsieur Maigret. It's my mother-in-law.”

“Oh yes! Sorry. Has she had her operation?”

“She went back home yesterday.”

“Would you have a look and see if you've got anything under the name Marcel Pacaud? With a
d
at the end.”

Was it any better in London? You could hear the rain hammering on the roof, cascading into the gutters.

“Marcel?” asked the clerk, perched on a ladder.

“That's right. Pass me his file.”

Besides fingerprints, it contained a photograph, full face, and a profile, without collar or tie, under the crude light of the identity department.

“Pacaud, Marcel-Joseph-Étienne, born in Le Havre, seaman…”

Frowning, Maigret tried to remember, his eyes fixed on the photographs. The man, at the time they had been taken, was thirty-five. He was thin, sickly looking. A black bruise below the right eye seemed to indicate that he had been interrogated thoroughly before being handed over to the photographer.

There followed a long list of convictions. At Le Havre, aged seventeen, assault and battery. At Bordeaux, a year later, assault and battery again, with drunkenness on the public way. Resisted arrest. Assault and battery again in a house of ill repute in Marseilles.

Maigret held the file so as to let his English colleague read at the same time as himself, and Mr. Pyke showed no surprise, seemed to say:

“We have that over on the other side as well.”

“Living on immoral earnings…”

Did they have that too? That meant Marcel Pacaud had been a pimp. And, in the usual way, he had been sent off to do his military service in the Africa Battalions.

“Assault and battery, at Nantes…”

“Assault and battery, at Toulon…”

“A thug,” Maigret said simply to Mr. Pyke.

Then it became more serious.

“Paris. Inveigling.”

The Englishman asked: