The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (2 page)

The younger man's pace was slowing
down, and he examined several such establishments suspiciously before choosing a
seedy-looking one with a large white globe of frosted glass over the front door.

He was still carrying his suitcase in
one hand and his little sausages in bread rolls wrapped in tissue paper in the
other.

The street was bustling. Fog began to
drift in, dimming the light from the shop windows.

The man with the heavy overcoat finally
managed to obtain the room next to that of the first traveller.

A poor room, like all the other poor
rooms in the world, except, perhaps, that poverty is nowhere more dispiriting than
in northern Germany.

But there was a communicating door
between the two rooms, a door with a keyhole.

The second man was thus able to witness
the opening of the suitcase, which turned out to contain only old newspapers.

He saw the other fellow turn so white
that it was painful to witness, saw him turn the suitcase over and over in
his trembling hands, scattering the
newspapers around the room.

The rolls and sausages sat on the table,
still in their wrapping, but the young man, who had not eaten since four that
afternoon, never even gave them a glance.

He rushed back to the station, losing
his way, asking for directions ten times, blurting out over and over in such a
strong accent that he could barely be understood:
‘
Bahnhof?
'

He was so upset that, to make himself
better understood, he imitated the sound of a train!

He reached the station. He wandered in
the vast hall, spotted a pile of luggage somewhere and stole up to it like a thief
to make sure that his suitcase wasn't there.

And he gave a start whenever someone
went by with the same kind of suitcase.

The second man followed him everywhere,
keeping a sombre eye on him.

Not until midnight, one following the
other, did they return to the hotel.

The keyhole framed the scene: the young
man collapsed in a chair, his head in his hands. When he stood up, he snapped his
fingers as if both enraged and overcome by his fate.

And that was the end. He pulled a
revolver from his pocket, opened his mouth as wide as he could and pressed the
trigger.

A moment later there were ten people in
the room, although Detective Chief Inspector Maigret, still in his overcoat with its
velvet collar, was attempting to keep them out.
Polizei
, they kept saying,
and
Mörder
.

The young man was even more pitiful dead
than alive.
The soles of his shoes had holes
in them, and one leg of his trousers had been pushed up by his fall, revealing an
incongruously red sock on a pale, hairy shin.

A policeman arrived and with a few
imperious words sent the crowd out on to the landing, except for Maigret, who
produced his detective chief inspector's badge of the Police Judiciaire in
Paris.

The officer did not speak French.
Maigret could venture only a few words of German.

Within ten minutes, a car pulled up
outside the hotel, and some officials in civilian clothes rushed in.

Out on the landing, the onlookers now
discussed the
Franzose
instead of the
Polizei
and watched the
inspector with interest. As if snapping off a light, however, a few orders put an
end to their excited speculation, and they returned to their rooms. Down in the
street, a silent group of bystanders kept a respectful distance.

Inspector Maigret still clenched his
pipe between his teeth, but it had gone out. And his fleshy face, which seemed
punched out of dense clay by strong thumbs, bore an expression bordering on fear or
disaster.

‘I would like permission to
conduct my own inquiry while you are conducting yours,' he announced.
‘One thing is certain: this man committed suicide. He is a
Frenchman.'

‘You were following
him?'

‘It would take too long to
explain. I would like your technicians to photograph him from all angles and with as
much clarity of detail as possible.'

Commotion had given way to silence in
the hotel room; only Maigret and two policemen were left.

One of the Germans, a fresh-faced young
man with a
shaved head, wore a morning coat
and striped trousers. His official title was something like ‘doctor of
forensic science', and every now and then he wiped the lenses of his
gold-rimmed spectacles.

The other man, equally rosy but less
formal in his attire, was rummaging around everywhere and making an effort to speak
French.

They found nothing except a passport in
the name of Louis Jeunet, mechanic, born in Aubervilliers. As for the revolver, it
carried the mark of a firearms manufacturer in Herstal, Belgium.

That night, back at the headquarters of
the Police Judiciaire on Quai des Orfèvres, no one would have pictured Maigret,
silent and seemingly crushed by the turn of events, watching his German colleagues
work, keeping out of the way of the photographers and forensic pathologists, waiting
with stubborn concern, his pipe still out, for the pathetic harvest handed over to
him at around three in the morning: the dead man's clothes, his passport and a
dozen photos taken by magnesium flashlights to hallucinatory effect.

Maigret was not far from – indeed quite
close to – thinking that he had just killed a man.

A man he didn't know! He knew
nothing about him! There was no proof whatsoever that he was wanted by the law!

It had all begun the previous day in
Brussels, in the most unexpected way. Maigret happened to have been sent there to
confer with the Belgian police about some Italian refugees who had been expelled
from France and whose activities were now cause for concern.

An assignment that
had seemed like a pleasure trip! The meetings had taken less time than anticipated,
leaving the inspector a few hours to himself.

And simple curiosity had led him to step
inside a small café in Rue Montagne aux Herbes Potagères.

It was ten in the morning; the café was
practically deserted. While the jovial proprietor was talking his ear off in a
friendly way, however, Maigret had noticed a customer at the far end of the room,
where the light was dim, who was absorbed in a strange task.

The man was shabby and looked for all
the world like one of the chronically unemployed found in every big city, always on
the lookout for an opportunity.

Except that he was pulling
thousand-franc notes from his pocket and counting them, after which he wrapped them
in grey paper, tied the package with string and addressed it. At least thirty notes,
30,000 Belgian francs! Maigret had frowned at that, and when the unknown man left
after paying for his coffee, the inspector had followed him to the nearest post
office.

There he had managed to read the address
over the man's shoulder, an address written in a handwriting much more
sophisticated than a simple schoolboy scrawl:

But what struck Maigret the most was the
description:
Printed matter
.

Thirty thousand francs travelling as
simple newsprint, as ordinary brochures – because the parcel hadn't even been
sent via registered mail!

A postal clerk weighed it:
‘Seventy centimes …'

The sender paid and
left. Maigret had noted down the name and address. He then followed his man and had
been amused – for a moment – at the thought of making a present of him to the
Belgian police. Later on he would go to find the chief commissioner of the Brussels
police and casually remark, ‘Oh, by the way, while I was having a glass of
your delicious gueuze beer, I spotted a crook … All you'll have to
do is pick him up at such-and-such a place …'

Maigret was feeling positively cheerful.
A gentle play of autumn sunshine sent warm air wafting through the city.

At eleven o'clock, the unknown man
spent thirty-two francs on a suitcase of imitation leather – perhaps even imitation
canvas – in a shop in Rue Neuve. And Maigret, playing along, bought the same one,
with no thought of what might come next.

At half past eleven, the man turned into
a little alley and entered a hotel, the name of which Maigret couldn't manage
to see. The man shortly reappeared and at Gare du Nord took the train to
Amsterdam.

This time, the inspector hesitated. Was
his decision influenced, perhaps, by the feeling that he had already seen that face
somewhere?

‘It probably isn't anything
important. But – what if it is?'

No urgent business awaited him in Paris.
At the Dutch border, he had been intrigued by the way the man, with what was clearly
practised skill, heaved his suitcase up on to the roof of the train before it
stopped at the customs station.

‘We'll see what happens when
he gets off somewhere …'

Except that he did not stay in
Amsterdam, where he
simply purchased a
third-class ticket for Bremen. Then the train set off across the Dutch plain, with
its canals dotted with sailboats that seemed to be gliding along right out in the
fields.

Neuschanz … Bremen …

Just on the off chance, Maigret had
managed to switch the suitcases. For hours on end, he had tried without success to
classify this fellow with one of the familiar police labels.

‘Too nervous for a real
international criminal. Or else he's the kind of underling who gets his bosses
nabbed … A conspirator? Anarchist? He speaks only French, and we've
hardly any conspirators in France these days, or even any militant anarchists! Some
petty crook off on his own?'

Would a crook have lived so cheaply
after mailing off 30,000-franc notes in plain grey paper?

In the stations where there was a long
wait, the man drank no alcohol, consuming simply coffee and the occasional roll or
brioche.

He was not familiar with the line,
because at every station he would ask nervously – even anxiously – if he was going
in the right direction.

Although he was not a strong, burly man,
his hands bore the signs of manual labour. His nails were black, and too long as
well, which suggested that he had not worked for a while.

His complexion indicated anaemia,
perhaps destitution.

And Maigret gradually forgot the clever
joke he'd thought of playing on the Belgian police by jauntily presenting them
with a trussed-up crook.

This conundrum fascinated him. He kept
finding excuses for his behaviour.

‘Amsterdam
isn't that far from Paris …'

And then …

‘So what! I can take an express
from Bremen and be back in thirteen hours.'

The man was dead. There was no
compromising paper on him, nothing to reveal what he had been doing except an
ordinary revolver of the most popular make in Europe.

He seemed to have killed himself only
because someone had stolen his suitcase! Otherwise, why would he have bought rolls
from the station buffet but never eaten them? And why spend a day travelling, when
he might have stayed in Brussels and blown his brains out just as easily as in a
German hotel?

Still, there was the suitcase, which
might hold the solution to this puzzle. And that's why – after the naked body
had been photographed and examined from head to toe, carried out wrapped in a sheet,
hoisted into a police van and driven away – the inspector shut himself up in his
hotel room.

He looked haggard. Although he filled
his pipe as always, tapping gently with his thumb, he was only trying to persuade
himself that he felt calm.

The dead man's thin, drawn face
was haunting him. He kept seeing him snapping his fingers, then immediately opening
his mouth wide for the gunshot.

Maigret felt so troubled – indeed,
almost remorseful – that only after painful hesitation did he reach for the
suitcase.

And yet that suitcase would supposedly
prove him right! Wasn't he going to find there evidence that the man
he was weak enough to pity was a crook, a
dangerous criminal, perhaps a murderer?

The keys still hung from a string tied
to the handle, as they had in the shop in Rue Neuve. Maigret opened the suitcase and
first took out a dark-grey suit, less threadbare than the one the dead man had been
wearing. Beneath the suit were two dirty shirts frayed at the collar and cuffs,
rolled into a ball, and a detachable collar with thin pink stripes that had been
worn for at least two weeks, because it was quite soiled wherever it had touched the
wearer's neck … Soiled and shoddy …

That was all. Except for the bottom of
the suitcase: green paper lining, two brand-new straps with buckles and swiveling
tabs that hadn't been used.

Maigret shook out the clothing, checked
the pockets. Empty! Seized with a choking sense of anguish, he kept looking, driven
by his desire – his need – to find something.

Hadn't a man killed himself
because someone had stolen this suitcase? And there was nothing in it but an old
suit and some dirty laundry!

Not even a piece of paper. Nothing in
the way of documents. No sign of any clue to the dead man's past.

The hotel room was decorated with new,
inexpensive and aggressively floral wallpaper in garish colours. The furniture,
however, was old and rickety, broken-down, and the printed calico draped over the
table was too filthy to touch.

The street was deserted, the shutters of
the shops were closed, but a hundred metres away there was the reassuring thrum of
steady traffic at a crossroads.

Maigret looked at the communicating
door, at the keyhole he no longer dared to peek through. He remembered
that the technicians had chalked the
outline of the body on the floor of the neighbouring room for future study.