Maigret and the Fortuneteller
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Georges Simenon
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The 44th Inspector Maigret Novel
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Contents
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| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
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Copyright © 1944 by Editions Gallimard English translation copyright ©
1989 by Georges Simenon

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Simenon, Georges, 1903-Maigret and the fortuneteller.

Translation of: Signé Picpus

I. Title.

PQ2637.I53S5413 - 1989 - 843`.912 - 88-16301

ISBN 0-15-155571-0

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Chapter One
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^ »

It was three minutes to five. On the enormous map of Paris that covered
a large part of the wall, a small white disk lighted up. Seeing it, a
man put down his sandwich and thrust a plug into one of the thousand
sockets of the switchboard.

'Hello!… Fourteenth?… Your car's just left?…'

Maigret, who was doing his best to look unconcerned, stood, with the sun
shining full on him, mopping his brow.

The man at the switchboard grunted something, removed the plug, and
picked up his sandwich. It was for the superintendent's benefit that he
murmured: 'A bercy.'

This meant, in their professional jargon, a drunk.

It was August, and Paris smelled of warm asphalt. Through the wide-open
windows, the roar of the traffic on the Ile de la Cité penetrated this
room that was the brain of the police emergency center. Below, in the
courtyard of Police Headquarters, two vans packed with men stood ready
and waiting to go.

Another disk lighted up, this time in the Eighteenth Arrondissement.
Once again, down went the sandwich, in went the plug.

'Yes?… Gérard?… How are you?… What's going on?… Is that all?…'

Someone had fallen out of a window--or had thrown himself out. It seemed
to be the current choice for suicide--by the poor and the old
especially, and mainly in the Eighteenth.

Maigret knocked out his pipe on the windowsill and refilled it, glancing
at the clock. It was two minutes past the hour.

Two minutes past! Had they killed the fortuneteller or hadn't they?

The door opened, and Lucas, short, round, and bustling, appeared, also
mopping his brow.

'Well, Chief, nothing yet?'

Like Maigret, he had crossed the street that separated the Police
Judiciaire from Police Headquarters to be on the spot if any news came
in.

'By the way, that fellow's here again…'

'Mascouvin?'

'Yes, and white as a sheet. He wants to talk to you. He says the only
thing now is to kill himself.'

Another disk lighted up. Might this be what they were waiting for?…
No. Not yet. Only a fight at Porte de Saint-Ouen.

A telephone call. The director of the Police Judiciaire asking for the
superintendent.

'Hello! Is that you, Maigret?… Anything happened?… Nothing so
far?…'

A slight emphasis on the last two words, and the sarcasm wasn't lost on
Maigret, who looked savagely at the receiver as he put it down. He was
hot and would have given a lot for a tall glass of cold beer. For the
first time in his life, he was not far from hoping that a crime had been
committed.

For if the fortuneteller had not been killed on the stroke of five, he'd
been made a fool of, and it would be weeks, if not months, before his
colleagues got tired of teasing him about it.

All because of a few words written backward on a piece of blotting
paper!

'Go get Mascouvin.'

Certainly nobody could have looked less like a practical joker than this
Mascouvin. He had turned up at the Police Judiciaire the evening before,
and had insisted on seeing Superintendent Maigret in person. Nobody else
would do, and he had waited obstinately, his face twitching from time to
time with a nervous tic.

'It's a matter of life or death,' he had said.

A thin, dull man with glasses, approaching middle age, who could never
have been taken for anything but a somewhat seedy bachelor, which indeed
was what he was. He fidgeted the whole time he was telling his story.

'I've worked for fifteen years at Proud and Drouin--you know, the
real-estate agent on Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. I live alone in a little
two-room apartment on Place des Vosges. Number 21… Every evening I go
and play bridge at a club on Rue des Pyramides… During the last two
months I've had such bad luck. It's swallowed up all my savings… I owe
the countess eight hundred francs…'

Maigret listened with only half an ear, thinking that at that moment
half of Paris was on vacation, while the rest were sitting under the
awnings of café terraces sipping cool drinks.

A countess? Who would she be?… The wretched visitor made haste to
explain that she had once been rich but had fallen on hard times. With
almost no assets except a fine apartment on Rue des Pyramides, she had
made use of it to start a bridge club. A handsome woman, according to
Mascouvin, and it wasn't hard to guess he was in love with her.

'This afternoon, at four o'clock, Superintendent, I took a thousand
francs of my firm's money…'

He couldn't have looked more tragic if he had killed a whole family.
Still fidgeting and twitching, he went on with his confession. When he
left his office, he wandered around the streets with the thousand-franc
note in his pocket, tormented by remorse. He entered the Café des
Sports, at the corner of Place de la République and Boulevard Voltaire,
where he was in the habit of dropping in for an apéritif before dinner.

'Nestor, bring me some writing paper, will you?'

He always called the waiter by his Christian name. Yes, he would write
to his employers and tell them everything, and at the same time send
them back their thousand francs. It would be easier than telling them
face to face, and he could explain the whole thing--his run of bad luck
for two whole months and the countess's pressing him to pay his debt.

Though he adored the countess, she had a soft spot only for a retired
army officer who frequented the club.

Nestor duly returned with pen and ink and a folder that contained a few
sheets of paper and a blotter.

Mascouvin opened the folder and sat staring at it, not knowing how to
begin. Because he was nearsighted and didn't need his glasses for
writing, he had put them down on the blotter, and they lay there, the
lenses vertical to the blotter. It was in fact the way he'd put them
down that was the cause of everything. With the play of light, one of
the lenses acted as a mirror, reflecting--the right way, of
course--something that had been blotted. It was the phrase am going to
kill, and his curiosity was immediately aroused. Who was going to kill
whom?

Shifting the glasses, he was gradually able to piece together the whole
sentence, in fact the whole note--for it was a note someone had written
and signed.

Tomorrow afternoon on the stroke of five I am going to kill the
fortuneteller. Picpus.

Five past five. The man at the switchboard had had time to finish his
sandwich, which smelled of garlic, for the little white disks all over
the map of Paris remained obstinately unlighted. Steps could be heard on
the stairs. It was Lucas, with the wretched Mascouvin.

The latter hadn't written to his employers after all. The previous
evening, after hearing his story, Maigret had advised him to go to work
as usual and put the thousand-franc note back where it belonged, without
saying anything about it. It had been thought just as well, however, to
keep an eye on him, and Lucas was given the job. About half past nine
Mascouvin went to Rue des Pyramides and hung around for a while, without
going up to the countess's apartment.

He spent the night in his own apartment on Place des Vosges and was at
his office at the usual time next morning. He had lunch in a cheap
restaurant on Boulevard Saint-Martin.

It was only at half past four that he suddenly decided he could bear it
no longer and, leaving the dingy offices of Proud and Drouin, made once
again for the Quai des Orfčvres.

'I couldn't hold out any longer, Superintendent. I couldn't look anybody
in the face, least of all my employers… I had the feeling…'

'Sit down… and keep quiet…'

Eight after five. A triumphant sun blazed down on Paris, which seemed to
be crawling with humanity, the men walking around in their shirt
sleeves, the women nearly nude under their thin dresses. Meanwhile, the
police were watching over four hundred eighty-two fortunetellers and
clairvoyants!

'Do you think, Maigret, it's a hoax?' Lucas sighed. He was worried, for
his chief risked being made ridiculous.

A disk in the Third lighted up.

'Hello!… Right!…'

The man on the switchboard sighed too, in sympathy. 'Only another
bercy… You'd think it was Saturday!'

Mascouvin couldn't keep still. He kept jumping around in his seat,
pulling his fingers, and opening his mouth.

'Excuse me, Superintendent, I really must tell you…'

'Don't talk!' snapped Maigret.

Had the man named Picpus decided to kill or not?

A lighted disk. Again in the Eighteenth.

'Hello?… Superintendent Maigret?… Yes, he's here. Hold on a
moment…'

Maigret's heart beat a little faster as he took the receiver.

'Hello… Yes… Rue Damrémont police station… What's that?… 67 bis
Rue Caulaincourt… Mademoiselle Jeanne… What? A fortuneteller?'

His voice had risen to a roar. His eyes glowed.

'Come on, Lucas. Quick!… Yes, bring him along too… You never know.'

Looking rather like a sleepwalker, a sad sleepwalker, Joseph Mascouvin
followed the two men down dusty stairs to where a police car was waiting
in the courtyard.

'67 bis Rue Caulaincourt… Quickly!'

On the way Maigret looked at the list of fortunetellers and clairvoyants
that had been compiled, for discreet surveillance, the evening before.
Naturally, Mademoiselle Jeanne's name was not among them.

'Can't you go any faster?'

And that fool of a Mascouvin asked timidly: 'Is she dead?'

For a moment Maigret wondered whether he was as naďve as he appeared.

We'll see about that! he said to himself.

'Revolver?' murmured Lucas.

'Knife.'

There was no need to look for the numbers. A crowd had collected outside
the house, which faced Place Constantin Pecqueur.

'Shall I wait down here?' stammered Mascouvin.

'No. Come up… Come on. Follow us.'

Policemen controlling the crowd made a way through it for Maigret and
his sergeant.

'Fifth floor. The door on the right.'

There was no elevator. The house was well kept, however, and the
horrified tenants gathered on the landings looked respectable and
prosperous. On the fifth floor, the police superintendent of the
Eighteenth held out his hand to Maigret.

'Come in… The body's not yet cold… It was only by luck that we got
here so soon, as you'll see.'

One entered a little room bathed in sunshine, which poured in through a
wide bay window opening onto a balcony that looked southward right
across the city. It was a pretty little room, neat and cozy, with
pale-colored curtains, Louis XVI chairs, and charming ornaments.

A local doctor turned around to greet them with 'There's nothing to be
done… The second blow was fatal…'

The room was too small for all the people gathered there. Maigret, after
filling his pipe, took off his jacket, revealing the mauve suspenders
his wife had bought for him the week before. They were even made of
silk, and brought a smile to the local superintendent's face. That
smile, in turn, brought a scowl to Maigret's.

'Come on… Tell us… What happened?'

'I haven't had time to collect much information yet, particularly since
the concierge is anything but talkative. You have to drag the words out
of her one by one… This Mademoiselle Jeanne--her real name's Marie
Picard, and she was born in Bayeux…'

Maigret lifted up the sheet that had been thrown over the body. She had
been a good-looking woman. Fortyish. Plump and well preserved. Fair hair
whose color might not be altogether natural.

'She wasn't registered as a fortuneteller and she never advertised.
Still she seems to have had quite a number of people coming to consult
her.'

'How many this afternoon?'

'I asked Madame Baffoin--Eugénie Baffoin--but she said she didn't know.
She said it was no business of hers and that concierges weren't half as
nosy as they were made out to be… A few minutes past five this
lady…'

A lively little woman, also middle-aged, jumped up from her chair. She
was wearing a rather absurd hat.

'I knew Mademoiselle Jeanne quite well,' she explained. 'From time to
time she came and spent a few days with us at Morsang… Do you know
Morsang?… On the Seine, by the barrage a little above Corbeil… I
have an inn there, the Pretty Pigeon… And since Isidore had caught
some fine tench, and I was coming to Paris, I said to myself…'

The tench were there in a basket, packed in grass to keep them fresh.

'You see, I knew she was fond of fish, and I thought it would be a
little treat for her…'

'How long have you known her?'

'For the last five years or so… Once, she came and stayed with us a
whole month…'

'Alone?'

'What sort of a person do you take her for?… As I was saying, I just
dropped in, between errands. I found the door ajar. Just an inch or
two--like this… So I simply called out `Mademoiselle Jeanne! It's
me--Madame Roy!' Then, when there was no answer, I came in, and… she
was sitting at that little table, leaning forward. I thought she'd
fallen asleep. I went over to give her a shake and…'

Thus, at about seven minutes past five Mademoiselle Jeanne, the
fortuneteller, was already dead, with two knife wounds in her back.

'Has the weapon been found?' asked Maigret, turning to the local
superintendent.

'No.'

'Was the place ransacked?'

'No. As you see, everything seems to be in perfect order… I doubt if
the murderer even went into the bedroom. Look…'

He opened a door that led to a bedroom, prettier than the living room. A
little boudoir, a feminine nest, with frills and pastel colors.

'And you say that the concierge…'

'Knows nothing about it… It was Madame Roy here who called us, from
the bar over there… We found her on the doorstep… There's just one
thing… Ah! Here's the locksmith I sent for… Come in, will you?…
Open this door for us…'

Maigret happened to glance at Mascouvin, sitting miserably on the edge
of a chair, and the Proud and Drouin clerk whined: 'I don't think I can
bear it, Superintendent.'

'Too bad!'

It would be much worse when the Crime Squad experts came on the scene.
Maigret wished he had time first to down a beer.

'As you see,' explained the local superintendent, 'the apartment
consists of this room, the simple dining room over there, the bedroom, a
storeroom, and…'

He pointed to the door on which the locksmith was already at work.

'I suppose that's the kitchen.'

The locksmith found a skeleton key that did the trick. The door swung
open.

'Well, and who are you?… What are you doing there?…'

It was so unexpected as to be almost comic. In a clean and tidy little
kitchen, in which there wasn't a single dirty plate or glass, an old man
was sitting on the edge of the table, where he appeared to be waiting
meekly and patiently.

'Answer! What are you doing there?'

The old man gazed blankly at the men who filed into the room, but he
seemed unable to answer. The oddest thing of all was that, on this
boiling August day, he was wearing an overcoat, one that had turned
green with age. His cheeks were covered with an unkempt beard. His
shoulders sagged; his look was evasive.

'How long have you been there?'

He seemed to be making an effort, as though the question was difficult
to understand. Finally he took a watch out of his pocket, studied it,
and said: 'Forty minutes.'

'So you were here at five o'clock?'

'I arrived just before.'

'Then you must have witnessed the crime.'

'What crime?'

He was a bit deaf and kept turning one ear toward the local
superintendent.

'What? You don't know that…?'

In the sitting room, the sheet was lifted up to show him the body. He
gazed at it in stupefaction.

'Well?'

He didn't answer. He stood as though petrified. Then his hand went up to
wipe his eyes. That didn't necessarily mean he was crying, however;
Maigret had already noticed that his eyes watered continually.

'What were you doing in that kitchen?'

Again the old man stared blankly at them, as though the words had no
meaning for him.

'How did you come to be locked in that kitchen?' he was asked again.
'And where's the key?'

There was no sign of it on either side of the door.

'I don't know,' sighed the old man, like a child who expects a beating.

'What don't you know?'

'Anything.'

'Let's see your papers.'

The old man rumbled in his pockets, wiped his eyes again, sniffed, and
finally held out a wallet with silver initials. Maigret and the local
superintendent exchanged glances.

Was the old man really not very bright, or was he acting the part? If
the latter, he was certainly doing it to perfection. Opening the wallet,
Maigret extracted an identity card, which he proceeded to read out loud.

'Octave Le Cloaguen, Ship's Surgeon (Retired), age 68, 13 Boulevard des
Batignolles, Paris.'

'There are too many of us here,' he growled suddenly. 'Send everyone
out.'

There were indeed a good dozen people in the room, which had become
unbearably stuffy.

Joseph Mascouvin got up docilely.

'Not you! Get back where you were, damn it! And keep still…'

'You, too. Sit down, Monsieur Le Cloaguen. Come on, now! What were you
doing here?'

The old man trembled. Once again he seemed to hear the words without
grasping their sense.

Twice Maigret repeated the question, each time louder, and finally Le
Cloaguen stammered: 'Oh yes!… Excuse me… I came here…'

'What for?'

'To see her.' And he pointed toward the body under the sheet.

'Did you want your fortune told?'

No answer.

'Were you one of her customers? Yes or no?'

'Yes… I came…'

'And what happened?'

'I was sitting here… Yes, on that gilt chair… There was a knock at
the door… like this…'

He went over to the door. Was he going to run? No. It was only to knock
in a special way, three or four staccato raps.

'Then she said…'

'Yes, go on. What did she say?'

'She said: `In there. Quick!' And she pushed me into the kitchen.'

'Was it she who locked the door?'

'I don't know.'

'And then what?'

'Nothing… I sat down on the edge of the table… The window was open,
and I looked down into the street.'

'And after that?'

'Nothing… I heard lots of voices… I thought I'd better keep quiet.'

He spoke slowly, quietly, and even sadly. Suddenly he asked an
unexpected question: 'Have you got any tobacco?'

'A cigarette?'

'No. Tobacco.'

Maigret held out his pouch. Le Cloaguen took a pinch of tobacco and put
it in his mouth with visible satisfaction.

'You needn't tell my wife…'

Meanwhile, Lucas had been searching through the apartment. Maigret knew
what he was looking for.

'Well?' he asked.

'Nothing, Chief. The key is neither in here nor in the kitchen. I've
sent a man down to look in the street, in case it was thrown out the
window.'

Maigret turned back to Le Cloaguen.

'So, you say you came here at a few minutes before five to consult the
fortuneteller. Two or three minutes before the hour, someone knocked in
a particular way, and Mademoiselle Jeanne pushed you into the kitchen…
Is that right?

. . You sat there on the table looking out the window. Then you heard
voices, but you didn't move… You didn't even look through the
keyhole…'

'No. I thought she had company.'

'Have you been here before?'

'Every week.'

'For how long?'

'Very long.'

Was he quite right in the head, or wasn't he?

The whole district was in a turmoil. When the cars from the Public
Prosecutor's Office arrived, there was a crowd of at least two hundred
outside the house. And all in a blaze of sunshine that lighted up the
brightly colored awnings over the café terraces. A café terrace! That
was the place to be on a day like this, with a cold beer.

Maigret put on his jacket again when he heard voices on the landing.

'So you're here, Superintendent,' the deputy public prosecutor said. 'I
suppose that means we've got something interesting…'

'Unless I've got hold of a couple of half-wits,' growled Maigret to
himself.

That brute Mascouvin, who couldn't take his eyes off the superintendent.
And the old man, snuffling and chewing his tobacco.

Other cars drew up, this time with reporters.

'Here, Lucas! Take these two fellows away… I'll be back at the Quai in
half an hour.'

Mascouvin peered around for his hat. Before going, he turned back to
say, with the same mournful seriousness he gave to everything: 'You see,
Superintendent, Picpus did kill the fortuneteller!'

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Chapter Two
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« ^ »

Curiously enough, it was the sight of a hand, the man's hand resting on
a threadbare trouser leg, that made Maigret feel the tragedy that had
occurred. For the first time he saw in his companion something more than
a puppet--a picturesque puppet--being moved across the stage.

Earlier, in the apartment on Rue Caulaincourt, he had witnessed the
'performance,' which was the word he found most suitable to describe the
descent of the deputy public prosecutor and his minions on the scene of
the crime. In the middle of all the hullabaloo, Octave Le Cloaguen had
seemed to him a broken-down old creature with eyes that expressed
nothing unless it was stupidity. Maigret had been intrigued by the way
those eyes went completely blank at times, as though the old man's
spirit had flown off to some other place, and could be brought back only
by shouting the same question at him three times over.

Later on, in his office at the Quai des Orfčvres, which was like an
oven, since it caught the full blast of the western sun, Maigret,
sweating from every pore, had questioned the old man closely for over
half an hour, at the end of which he knew just about as much as when he
started. Le Cloaguen was quite unruffled by the interrogation. He even
gave the impression of being anxious to help the superintendent.

And all the time, while Maigret was mopping first his forehead, then the
back of his neck, the old man, still in his overcoat, was apparently
quite comfortable. Certainly he hadn't perspired a drop. Maigret was
sure of it. He had looked carefully.

Now they were driving in a taxi, with all the windows open. It was eight
o'clock in the evening, and a deliciously cool breeze circulated through
the streets of Paris. Le Cloaguen sat rigid in his seat, leaning forward
slightly, and Maigret's eye, for no particular reason, had come to rest
on his right hand, a curiously long hand, with knotty joints and skin so
old and withered it seemed to be positively cracking in places. The end
of the index finger was missing.

Was it that hand?… Maigret's mind wandered into fantasy… What a host
of things the human hand could accomplish! And this hand, sixty-eight
years old…

Suddenly a drop fell on the dry skin. They were driving just then along
Rue Auber, with cafés on either side and happy crowds jostling each
other on the sidewalks. Maigret raised his eyes. The old man stared,
blankly, straight in front of him, as before, but his forehead was
covered with beads of sweat.

It was so unexpected that Maigret was disconcerted. Why, after facing
with equanimity the ordeal of a police interrogation, should Le Cloaguen
suddenly be seized with panic? For there was no doubt about it. That
sweat had nothing to do with heat. It was caused by fear. It was the
outward sign of that interior collapse against which all efforts are in
vain.

Had the old man caught sight of something or somebody? It appeared
unlikely. Had he been upset by Maigret's staring at his hand? Was that
truncated finger somehow capable of giving him away?

The taxi struggled through the crowds around the Gare Saint-Lazare and
started up Rue de Rome. The shadows were already turning blue, and the
air grew cooler. Yet the beads of sweat became more and more profuse on
the old man's forehead, and his color changed to a leaden pallor.
Suddenly Maigret: understood: The man was becoming more and more
terrified as he approached his home.

A few minutes later they were on Boulevard des Batignolles, drawing up
in front of a big building of gray stone, with a porte-cochere, an
interior courtyard, and an air of spaciousness and affluence. The lodge
was well kept, and the concierge neatly dressed in black. The staircase
was dark, and the varnished steps were covered by a crimson carpet held
down by rods.

Le Cloaguen walked up slowly, breathing with difficulty. He said
nothing, but his sweating forehead spoke for him. What was it he was
afraid of?

Only one apartment on each floor. Handsome front doors of dark oak with
well-polished brasswork. On the fourth floor Maigret rang. For a whole
minute--and the minute seemed long--they could hear furtive steps
inside; then the door opened, only a few inches, but enough to reveal a
woman's face on which curiosity and mistrust were clearly written.

'Madame Le Cloaguen?'

The answer came hurriedly.

'Yes. My maid's out, so I had to answer the door myself.'

He felt that she was lying. He guessed that she didn't have a maid.

'If I'm not disturbing you, I'd like to have a few words with you…
Superintendent Maigret of the Police Judiciaire.'

The woman's eyes darted to her husband. She was fiftyish, a small
nervous woman, with mobile features--too mobile--and her eyes seemed
exceptionally keen. Her glance at her husband lasted only seconds, but
Maigret was conscious of its effect on the old man, from whom the smell
of fear seemed to emanate.

That was the only sign. His features expressed nothing. He said nothing,
explained nothing. Once again his spirit seemed far away, as he stood
meekly on the doormat waiting to be admitted to his own home.

The woman, who had recovered her self-possession, stood aside for
Maigret to pass, then crossed the hall and threw open the door of a huge
room, whose windows were framed by thick curtains, which kept out all
but a pale half-light.

'Sit down… What is it?… What has he been up to?'

Another sharp look at her husband, who had not even thought of taking
off his hat or coat.

Ten years later, Maigret could still have described every detail of that
room, with its three tall windows and green velveteen curtains with
yellow tassels, its easy chairs fitted with loose covers, the little
gilt table, the huge pockmarked mirror over the black marble
mantelpiece, the brass dogs in the fireplace…

A faint sound behind the door convinced him that someone was listening,
someone he guessed to be feminine. He wasn't wrong. He learned later
that it was Gisčle Le Cloaguen, the twenty-eight-year-old daughter.

The apartment must be very large, since it occupied a whole floor of the
building. Here and there it suggested wealth, yet over it hung a sort of
cloud of poverty. Madame Le Cloaguen was dressed in black silk, with a
cameo brooch on her bosom and beautiful rings on her fingers.

'First of all, madame, may I ask you whether you know a certain
Mademoiselle Jeanne?'

He was sure she didn't. She seemed to try genuinely to place the name.
Obviously she had been expecting quite a different question.

'What does she do?'

'She lives on Rue Caulaincourt.'

'No. I don't think I've ever…'

'Her profession consists of predicting the future… I must tell you
something that might upset you. To put the matter briefly, she was
murdered in her home at five o'clock this afternoon. And at the same
time your husband was in the apartment, having been locked in the
kitchen.'

'Octave! What were you doing there?'

She turned toward him and spoke with quiet dignity, but it didn't ring
true at all. No. That quiet dignity was affected, as false as the bronze
ornaments on the mantelpiece. Maigret was convinced that, as soon as he
left, the scene would degenerate into a sordid fight.

Le Cloaguen swallowed painfully before answering humbly.

'I was… I was there…'

With assumed disdain, she said: 'I didn't know you were interested in
having your fortune told.'

Then, taking no further notice of him, she turned back to Maigret.
Fiddling with her cameo brooch and looking very much a woman of the
world, she spoke, with increasing volubility.

'I must take you into my confidence, Superintendent… I know absolutely
nothing of this business. But I do know my husband. As he may perhaps
have told you, he was for many years in the merchant marine, serving as
doctor, first on board liners going to South America, then for some
years in the waters off China… Something must have happened to him. I
don't know what. But he's never been the same since…'

She didn't seem in the least embarrassed by discussing it in front of
him.

'You must have noticed yourself that there is something childish about
him… It's been a tragedy for us--for my daughter and me--since it has
made things difficult for us socially…'

Maigret understood. He looked around the room, picturing it with all the
loose covers removed, the chandelier lighted up, and plates of petits
fours on the little gilt table… women sitting stiffly with cups of tea
in their hands…

Later on, the concierge confirmed the picture he had formed, telling him
about the weekly receptions, which were generally referred to by the
other tenants as the Monday tea fights.

She also told him that Madame Le Cloaguen indeed had no servant, only a
cleaning woman who came in for a couple of hours in the morning. For the
Monday tea fights a butler was hired from a catering firm.

'And yet they're rich!' said the concierge, who was more talkative than
the one on Rue Caulaincourt. 'They're said to have an income of two
hundred thousand francs a year. A lawyer comes all the way from
Saint-Raphaël to see them every year in December, and he hands over
their money. What they do with it passes my understanding. Ask the
tradesmen around here what they think. At the butcher's, they never buy
anything but odds and ends, and not even much of that. And you see how
the poor old man's dressed, summer and winter alike…'

But what connection was there between this apartment and the bright,
comfortable little rooms on Rue Caulaincourt? Between this thin, nervous
little woman, who was terribly self-possessed, and the plump and pretty
Mademoiselle Jeanne, who had been killed in her sunny room a few hours
before?

Still, the case was only just opening up, and Maigret did not try to
jump to any conclusions. He was content to note facts and take stock of
the characters involved.

The strange Mascouvin, in his office at Proud and Drouin, at his home on
Place des Vosges, and in the countess's bridge salon on Rue des
Pyramides…

'He's just like a grown-up child, Superintendent,' Madame Le Cloaguen
was saying. 'I really can't put it in any other words… He spends his
days wandering around the streets, only coming home for meals. But I can
assure you he's absolutely harmless…'

Harmless. The word struck Maigret, and he turned to look at the old man
again. The beads of sweat were gone from his forehead, and he had
relapsed into a state of complete apathy.

What had he been so afraid of? And why had he now recovered his
composure, or, rather, his vacuity?

More rustling behind the door, and Madame Le Cloaguen called out: 'Come
in, Gisčle… This is my daughter… It is she more than anyone who
suffers from her father's condition. You know what I mean… It makes it
difficult for her to ask friends to drop in…'

Why was Gisčle so badly dressed? And why did she have that scowl on her
face, without which she would have been pretty? Her handshake was like a
man's. She greeted Maigret without a smile, without the least softening
of her expression, and when she turned toward the old man, her look was
pitiless.

It was she who said to him, as though speaking to a servant: 'Take your
hat off.'

'Do you know, Gisčle, your father went this afternoon to a
fortuneteller, and there's been a scandal…'

Strange, that word, scandal, applied to a crime! Evidently, to these two
women, the life and death of Mademoiselle Jeanne was of no account. What
mattered was that Le Cloaguen had been drawn into the case, had been
questioned at the Quai des Orfčvres. What mattered was that a police
inspector was now sitting in their living room.

'I'm extremely sorry if I'm putting you out in any way, but, considering
the circumstances, I'd like while I'm here to have a look at Monsieur Le
Cloaguen's room.'

'Gisčle?'

Madame Le Cloaguen threw a questioning glance at her daughter, who
nodded slightly, meaning, no doubt, that the old man's room was
presentable.

Maigret made it an excuse to have a good look at the apartment. Quite a
comfortable dining room. Madame Le Cloaguen's bedroom had some old but
good pieces of furniture. No sign of a bathroom anywhere, but each of
the principal bedrooms had its cabinet de toilette. The walls of the
latter had not been repapered for years, and the floors were covered
with odd scraps of linoleum.

'My husband uses his room as a study too,' explained Madame Le Cloaguen.
'His life at sea gave him a taste for simplicity… That's what he
likes… the utmost simplicity…'

Hold on! Here was something very odd. Why on earth should the bolt be on
the outside of the door, instead of on the inside? Was the wretched man
locked into his room?

On this point too, Maigret's suspicions were confirmed by the concierge.

'Yes, monsieur. You'd hardly believe it! When those ladies have their
friends in for tea, they lock the poor man up, for fear he'll suddenly
come into the room and spoil the party. And it's even said that if he's
ever late for a meal, he gets locked up for a day or two as a
punishment…'

A little room, hardly worthy of the name, looking out, not on Boulevard
des Batignolles, but on a narrow interior well. The window was covered
with transparent paper, obstructing still further the little light that
reached it.

A dusty unshaded low-watt bulb hung from the ceiling. There was an iron
bedstead and an iron washstand on three legs, a chipped enamel jug
beside it on the floor. In a corner stood the piece of furniture that
gave the place its only claim to be called a study--a monumental desk of
black wood, which had probably been bought cheap at an auction sale, and
which was much too big for the room.

Le Cloaguen had come in quietly with them, and stood there like a
schoolboy waiting for the inevitable punishment. Soon Maigret would go,
and then…

The superintendent almost had a feeling of guilt at the idea of leaving
him to these two women. He thought of that old hand with the mutilated
finger, that old hand which…

'It's Spartan, isn't it?' said Madame Le Cloaguen, delighted to have
found that word. 'He could have a more comfortable room any time he
likes, but this is what he prefers. Like his clothes. He insists on
wearing that old coat all year round. You could not persuade him to
change it for all the gold in the world.'

And the kitchen, madame? Is it the old man who insists on its being so
squalid, with an unscrubbed table littered with dirty dishes, saucepans
not scoured for years, and cupboards practically empty? The only food
visible was some wretched-looking vegetables and a dish of ragout that
was no doubt waiting to be warmed up for their supper.

Gisčle's room was like her mother's, comfortable and well-furnished, but
here too was the same dreariness that hung over the whole apartment and
made it difficult to believe that, outside, the whole of Paris was
rejoicing in the cool air of a perfect August evening and the tender
glow of the lingering sunset.

'Have you lived here long?'

'Ten years, Superintendent. Ever since we left Saint-Raphaël. We thought
coming north might do my husband good, but it's turned out just the
opposite. He's worse than before…'

A strange idea, bring a man north for his health when he's spent most of
his life sailing to South America or in the China seas! As though the
noise and bustle of Paris would be good for a weak head!

The old man had remained in his room, like a well-trained dog. Maigret
would have liked to see him again and talk to him alone. To speak of
sympathy would perhaps be an exaggeration, but he was intrigued by the
man and wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery of his miserable
existence.

And obviously that was just what this woman didn't want him to do.

'You see! There's nothing mysterious about us. And if my husband
suddenly took it into his head to have his fortune told… There's no
knowing what goes on in a feeble mind like his… I hope,
Superintendent, that you'll soon be able to put your hands on the
murderer and that this unfortunate business will have no bad
consequences…'

No bad consequences for whom? For her, evidently, and that daughter of
hers, who was exactly like her. They formed, so to speak, a single
element in the case, for there was no doubt about one thing--they would
back each other up through thick and thin.

There was something wrong about this apartment. Several times Maigret
had the feeling that something was missing, as though a familiar object
had been removed. When he looked around, however, he could find nothing
to justify the feeling. All the usual items of furniture seemed to be
there. Nevertheless, he was unable to shake off the impression, and it
kept nagging him.

'Good evening, Superintendent… If there's any further information we
can give you…'

What would happen once the front door was shut? As he walked down the
stairs, Maigret pictured the old man in his room, waiting patiently to
be set upon by the two furious, raging women.

And suddenly a light flashed on in his mind. He had it! He knew what was
missing. In not one of the rooms he had visited had he seen a
photograph, neither on the walls nor on the mantelpieces, not even a
snapshot, such as is found in the humblest dwelling, no picture of the
beach or the mountains.

The walls had been bare, absolutely bare!

Maigret spent a quarter of an hour with the concierge, then went out
into the street, where he was joined by Inspector Janvier.

'Well, Chief, what are my orders?'

'Stay here. I think we'd better find out a little more about these
people.'

On Place Clichy, he went into a brasserie and called Madame Maigret, to
tell her he wouldn't be back for dinner. Then at last he settled down to
a glass of beer.

The most puzzling thing was that question of the key for the kitchen
door. That Mademoiselle Jeanne should have pushed the old man into the
kitchen was conceivable, but why should she lock him in? Though it
seemed to be his fate to be locked up.

Could the murderer have done it? Why should he? What would make him
think there was someone on the other side of that door?

On one point Maigret realized he had slipped up at Rue Caulaincourt. Had
the old man left his hat in the living room? No doubt he had taken it
off, and if he had been bundled hurriedly into the kitchen, it might
easily have been left behind. In that case, the murderer might have seen
it, noted the closed kitchen door, and taken the key.

Maigret took out his little notebook and wrote down the word hat. He
must ask the others. Of all those present, somebody ought to have
noticed whether Le Cloaguen had his hat with him when he came out of the
kitchen. But, in the midst of all that activity…

Or had the old man locked himself in and thrown the key out the window?

As for the other one, Mascouvin… Maigret finished his second glass of
beer and got up with a sigh, hesitating between a bus and a taxi.

The life of the streets around him seemed to become less real as the
mystery of Rue Caulaincourt gradually took hold of him. The streetlights
went on and the passers-by were reduced to mere blue shadows against a
paler blue ground. He decided on a taxi.

'Quai des Orfčvres.'

'Right away, Monsieur Maigret!'

It was childish, but it was human: it pleased him that the driver
recognized him, and the friendliness of the greeting touched him.

Picpus…

To whom could he--or she--have written that note in the Café des Sports
on Place de la République? But didn't the whole story sound rather
fantastic? Joseph Mascouvin, a model clerk, after years of faithful
service steals a thousand-franc note from his employers. He goes into a
café, asks for writing paper and pen, puts his glasses down on the
blotter, and right away sees the announcement of a forthcoming murder!

'Well, Monsieur Maigret, are you hot on the trail?'

Maigret sighed. He paid off the taxi and walked heavily up the stairs of
the Police Judiciaire. François, the receptionist, pounced on him before
he could reach his office.

'They're waiting for you, Superintendent.'

A glance at the huge padded door of the director's room. Maigret
understood.

The green-shaded lamp on the desk was lighted, but the curtains hadn't
yet been drawn. The windows were wide open on the darkening landscape of
the river, and puffs of cool air came into the room.

The director of the PJ looked up. Standing by him was Lucas, a woebegone
Lucas, whose eyes avoided his chief's.

'So you were quite right, Maigret… Picpus was as good as his word, and
killed the fortuneteller.'

The superintendent frowned, because he couldn't guess what this preamble
was leading up to.

'Unfortunately, it will be several days before we can get any more out
of the principal witness.'

Why should the words give Maigret a little stab? He had only known Le
Cloaguen for a few hours. And could he really claim to know him?… The
director's seriousness and Lucas's embarrassment hinted at some further
disaster. Could the old man have…?

'It was my fault,' murmured Lucas.

Why couldn't they come out with it and tell him what had happened?

'I questioned him for over an hour…'

A sigh of relief! So it had nothing to do with the old ship's doctor. It
was about Mascouvin, whom Lucas had been instructed to question once
again.

'I wanted to take him to Rue des Pyramides… It was just an off chance.
But I thought that if he was confronted by that countess of his, I might
be able to drag something more out of him… He'd been quite calm up to
then… I intended to take a taxi, but there was no sign of one on the
quay, so we started walking. There were a lot of people around, since
the Belle Jardiničre had just shut, and all the shoppers and clerks were
streaming out…'

'Go on.'

'It happened so quickly I couldn't stop him… We were crossing the
Pont-Neuf. He made a sudden dash for the parapet, and jumped over…'

Maigret filled his pipe and said nothing.

'Unfortunately, he didn't fall straight into the water, but struck one
of the piers.'

It was easy to imagine the scene. Hundreds of people rushing to the
parapet and craning their necks. More people watching from the quays. A
hat floating on the surface of the water, and then a dark lump bobbing
up and disappearing again. An onlooker throwing off his jacket and
plunging in after him…

'Luckily, a tug was passing…'

Again easy to imagine. Everybody shouting at the tug and pointing. The
tug going full speed astern. One of the crew armed with a boat hook. An
apparently lifeless Mascouvin being finally fished out and laid on the
black iron deck.

'He's not dead, but that's about all you can say for him. It was his
head that struck the pier… He was taken to the Hôtel-Dieu, and he's in
the hands of Chesnard, the chief surgeon…'

Maigret struck a match and drew on his pipe.

'What do you think?' asked the director. 'Puts a different light on it,
doesn't it?'

'A different light on what?' grunted the superintendent.

As for there being any light, he couldn't see it! It was too early for
that. All they knew for certain was that Mademoiselle Jeanne was dead,
killed by two knife wounds in the back while she was sitting at her
little Louis XVI table… If that meant anything, it meant she had been
quite unsuspecting…

Le Cloaguen in the kitchen… Mascouvin and his countess…

'What have you done with the woman?' asked Maigret, blowing out a cloud
of smoke.

'What woman?'

'The one who lives at Morsang and keeps the Pretty Pigeon… I can't
remember her name.'

'She wanted to catch a train…'

'By the way, does she know Mascouvin?'

Lucas hung his head.

'I didn't think of asking her… She was in a hurry. Said she had a lot
of people to look after…'

The director couldn't help smiling when Maigret asked finally: 'What
happened to her fish?'

As though he'd had his eye on it and would have liked to take it home to
Madame Maigret for dinner.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Three
-------------
« ^ »

Almost every quarter of an hour Maigret, sighing and groaning, made an
effort as though to lift the world, but it was only his own great lump
of a body that he heaved painfully over from one side to the other under
the sheet, to sink once again into a sleep peopled with nightmare
figures. Each time, he woke Madame Maigret, and, slow to get to sleep
again, she stared at the blind, which bellied out in the breeze for a
moment and then hung lifeless.

The night was crystal clear, and sounds carried far. On Boulevard
Richard-Lenoir she could even hear--or she thought she could--the little
train arriving at Les Halles.

At 21 Place des Vosges a window was open too, but there was no one
sleeping in the bed, which the concierge had as usual turned down.

Joseph Mascouvin was lying in the Hôtel-Dieu, with half his face
concealed by bandages, while a nurse sat knitting by his bedside.

No one sat by Mademoiselle Jeanne. She lay in a drawer in a huge
refrigerator in the Forensic Laboratory.

On Boulevard des Batignolles, not far from the lights of Place Clichy,
Inspector Janvier got up now and then from his seat to stroll up and
down under the trees. Sometimes he looked at the moon, which hung in the
sky between two gables covered with advertisements, sometimes at the
dark windows of Number 17.

At first, women had sidled up to him--strangely, all of them very
fat--but they had soon figured him out and had made themselves scarce.
One after another the bars closed their doors. Well before the first
paling of the eastern sky, a sudden chill in the air announced the
approach of dawn.

On Rue des Pyramides the countess's last guests didn't leave till five
in the morning, after eating some sandwiches.

The presses poured forth their newspapers. The Métro threw open its
gates. In the little cafés, the gas was lighted under the percolators,
and piles of warm croissants were put out on the bars.

Torrence, his eyes still filled with sleep, walked along Boulevard des
Batignolles looking for Janvier, whom he was to relieve.

'Anything happen?'

'Nothing.'

Maigret had his breakfast in his shirt sleeves. Life began to flow back
into the streets, over which hung a faint morning mist.

The young girl in the red hat, having neatened her two rooms and kitchen
not far from Place des Ternes, hurried toward the Métro, stopping for a
moment on the way to buy her morning paper.

But instead of going to the travel agency on Boulevard de la Madeleine
where she worked, she went on for another four stations, getting out at
Châtelet and making her way toward the huge dark Palais de Justice. She
was nervous, and her lips moved continuously, as though she was
rehearsing what she wanted to say.

Standing at his window, Maigret was carefully scraping out his two
pipes.

'A young lady wants to see you… She didn't give her name… She says
it's very urgent…'

With that, on this bright Saturday morning, another chapter opened in
the mystery. The girl wore a navy-blue suit and a red hat. Normally, she
must have shown to the world a happy, smiling, dimpled face, but now she
was distraught.

'Where is he, Superintendent?… Is he still alive?… He's my brother,
or, rather, my foster brother…'

She was referring to Mascouvin, whose photograph was on the front page
of her newspaper, alongside one of Maigret, the same one the newspapers
had printed with each new case for more than fifteen years.

'Hello!… Hôtel-Dieu?…'

Yes, Mascouvin was still alive. He was unconscious, however, and unable
to see anybody. The chief surgeon would be seeing him again in a few
minutes.

'Tell me something about him, mademoiselle… But first of all, what's
your name?'

'Berthe… Berthe Janiveau. I'm a stenographer at a travel agency. My
father was a carpenter in a village not far from Clermont… My parents
were quite old when I was born. In fact, they'd given up hope of having
a child of their own and had adopted an orphan, Joseph Mascouvin…'

In the presence of this fresh young girl, Maigret assumed a paternal and
benevolent air.

'Say, would you mind coming with me to your brother's place on Place des
Vosges?'

He took her in a taxi, and she talked the whole way there without his
having to ask any questions. The ground floor of the building formed an
arcade, and under it two or three people were talking eagerly to the
concierge, who held a newspaper in her hand.

'Such a quiet gentleman,' she was saying. 'So considerate and polite to
everybody!…'

On the second floor, a former cabinet minister lived. On the third, the
landlord. It was only on the fourth that the atmosphere changed. Here
four families were crowded into small apartments on either side of a
long corridor, where the sun came in through a skylight.

'Why should he want to kill himself?' said Mademoiselle Berthe. 'There
has never been anything the least tragic in his life…'

So far, Joseph Mascouvin had been, for Maigret, little more than odd and
somewhat disconcerting. But Mademoiselle Berthe talked, and his
apartment talked too. It consisted of one room, a cabinet de toilette,
and a little kitchenette. The room was scrupulously neat, and the books
on the shelves were serious, even forbidding. A phonograph looked as if
it had been recently bought.

'You see, Superintendent, he never thought himself quite like other
people. The village children used to call him The Orphan… At school he
was always top of his class. At home he was always ready to help. He was
always afraid of being a nuisance, of being in the way. He had the
feeling he was only there out of charity… My parents wanted him to go
on with his schooling. But then they died. And to everyone's surprise,
they left hardly any money… I was too young to go to work, and it was
Joseph who looked after me…'

'Why don't you live together?'

She blushed.

'He didn't want that… You see, we weren't really brother and
sister…'

'Tell me, mademoiselle, was he a little bit in love with you?'

'I think he may have been… But he never said so… He wouldn't have
dreamed of it.'

'Did he have any friends? Any girl friends?'

'I never knew of any… Sometimes he took me out on a Sunday.'

'Did he ever take you to Morsang?'

She looked puzzled.

'Where is it?'

'On the Seine. Just above Corbeil.'

'No. If we went to the country, it was on the Marne, at Joinville. We
went there quite often… For some time now, Joseph has had a passion
for bridge.'

'Has he ever spoken to you about the countess?'

'What countess?'

Maigret looked around the apartment discreetly. He didn't like to carry
out a thorough search in the girl's presence. Nothing offered the
faintest clue. In a desk were notebooks, in which Mascouvin kept
accounts, and they too gave the impression of a man meticulously
orderly. There were some books on bridge, one or two of them going into
complicated analysis.

Mademoiselle Berthe pointed to a photograph hanging on the wall. It was
of her parents. They were sitting in front of their house, and she, a
little girl, was squatting at their feet.

'Do you think your foster brother capable of stealing?'

'Joseph? Steal?… He's the most scrupulous man in the world…'

She laughed a little nervously.

'Of course, you don't know him… I remember once he was in a dreadful
state for a whole week, because he couldn't get his accounts to
balance…'

'Well, mademoiselle, you seem to have told me all you can, and the best
thing now is for you to go to your work… We'll get in touch with you
at once if there's any news.'

'You will, won't you, Superintendent?… Promise you won't forget…
Even if I can't talk to him, I'd like to see with my own eyes that he's
alive.'

Maigret shut the window, took a last look around the room, locked the
door, and slipped the key in his pocket. Downstairs, he had a word with
the concierge.

No, Mascouvin received practically no mail, she told him, except now and
again an express letter from his sister on a Saturday, fixing a
rendezvous for the following day… Lately, yes, he had seemed
preoccupied.

'Such a considerate man, Superintendent… If there were any children
playing in the courtyard, he never passed without speaking to them, and
at the end of the month he always had candy for them.'

Maigret walked to Place de la République, where he found the Café des
Sports practically empty. Nestor, the waiter, was wiping the
imitation-marble tables.

'Monsieur Mascouvin?… You can't imagine what a shock it gave me when I
picked up my paper this morning… That was where he always sat. Over
there…'

A slot machine near the bar; at the far end, a billiard table--for
Russian billiards--with a few tables on one side. It was at one of those
tables that Mascouvin always sat, always at the same time.

'No, I don't think I ever saw him speak to anybody… He drank his
apéritif slowly, always the same. He read his newspaper… He always
gave me twenty-five centimes for a tip… And seeing him come, you knew
the exact time.'

'Did he often ask you for writing materials?'

'I think it was the first time.'

Unfortunately, Nestor couldn't say whether Mascouvin really had written
something or whether he had merely stared at the blotter. Nor could
Nestor remember who had had the blotter before him.

'In the afternoon, there are so many…'

Maigret sighed and mopped his brow. A moment later he was trundling
along on the rear platform of a bus, dreaming wistfully of beaches and
long white-crested waves.

'Another young lady to see you, Maigret… You seem to be popular with
them today…'

A different type altogether from Mademoiselle Berthe. A plump girl,
perhaps eighteen, with a large bosom, red cheeks, and bulging eyes.
There was almost a smell of milk about her. You couldn't help feeling
she'd just come from milking the cows.

The feeling wasn't altogether unjustified, since she worked in a dairy
on Rue Caulaincourt. She was so overpowered by her surroundings that she
appeared about to cry.

'It was Monsieur Jules who told me to…'

'Excuse me. Who's Monsieur Jules?'

'The man I work for… He said I must absolutely come and see you…'

She soon felt more relaxed and watched the superintendent smoking his
pipe. He had that indulgent, fatherly look on his face.

'Tell me all about it,' he said.

'I don't know his name--I swear I don't… It was his car that caught my
eye, a beautiful green sports car…'

'A young man, is it?… What's he like?'

She blushed. Her name was Emma, and she'd only arrived in Paris a few
months before. In the mornings she carried the milk to the houses on Rue
Caulaincourt. In the afternoons she served in the shop.

'I really don't know how old he is. And he may be married.'

Married or not, he was obviously her hero.

'He's tall and dark and ever so smartly dressed, and he always has a
pale gray hat… Once, he had field glasses in a leather case.'

'And he parked his car near Number 67 bis, I suppose.'

'How did you know?… He'd been coming about once a week, sometimes
twice. I noticed he went into Number 67 bis, and I supposed it was to
see a girl friend.'

'Why?'

'He was dressed like that. As though he was going to see a woman… I
really can't explain it, but that's how it looked to me.'

'Have you ever been close enough to have a good look at him?'

Poor Emma! It was so easy to imagine her hovering around, finding any
pretext, however silly, to go out into the street to get near him.

'Did he come yesterday?'

She was almost in tears again. She could only nod her head.

'At what time?'

'I don't know exactly, but it must have been about five o'clock… He
didn't stay long… But he couldn't have killed the lady--really he
couldn't have!'

Of course not!

Maigret didn't contradict her, but questioned her patiently. Her
description of the man was more interesting than she imagined. The very
details that appealed to her put him into a category well known to the
police.

A flashy creature with a diamond ring. His clothes always looking new. A
frequenter of race tracks. A useful point perhaps--she had noticed he
had two teeth crowned with gold. Maigret would have to find out whether
the description tallied with anyone known to the Morals Squad or the
Gambling Squad. Also, whether there was anyone like that in the group
that went to the countess's bridge club.

'Thank you, mademoiselle… Monsieur Jules was quite right to tell you
to come.'

'He's innocent, isn't he?… I simply couldn't believe that a man like
that…'

What she hadn't confessed--though it's true it had no bearing on the
case--was that, more than once, when the green car was parked on Rue
Caulaincourt, she had thrown a flower on his seat when she passed.

'You didn't notice anyone else going into 67 bis about that time?'

'Yes. A lady.'

'What was she like?'

The description corresponded reasonably well with the landlady of the
Pretty Pigeon, but Emma was unable to say for certain whether she had
gone into the house before or after the man with the green sports car
had left.

While she was speaking, Maigret scribbled down some orders: Keep a
lookout for all green sports cars. Keep a lookout particularly at the
races for a tall, dark man… etc.

'Hello!… Hôtel-Dieu?…'

Mascouvin was not dead. The surgeon himself was at the other end of the
line. He gave the patient about one chance in five of recovering.

If he did pull through, there could be no thought of questioning him for
another week at least.

'Hello!… Mademoiselle Berthe?… Your brother's holding his own…
Don't worry… No. There's no question of your seeing him at present…
I'll keep you informed…'

Maigret sighed again. For a moment his eyes were vacant, while across
his retina stretched a long strip of gleaming sand, beyond it a
limitless glassy sea…

This was the most discouraging moment in a case. The characters were
beginning to take shape, the stage was more or less set, but the actors'
parts seemed as yet quite unrelated.

What was happening on Boulevard des Batignolles? Was the old man
imprisoned in his miserable room?

Strangely enough, the answer came at once. It was Inspector Torrence
calling.

'Is that you, Chief?… I'm telephoning from a little bar on the quay…
Our man left home on the stroke of nine… What?… Oh, yes. He's got
his overcoat on… No. He never looked at me. For that matter, he
doesn't seem to look at anything. He just walks slowly along, looking
straight in front of him, like a convalescent out walking for the first
time… Only, now and then he stops and looks in a shop window… He
hesitates before crossing streets, as though he's scared of cars… He
never once turned around to see if he was being followed… Now he's
standing on the quay watching a fisherman. I can see him from here…
What?… No. He hasn't spoken to a soul… What?… Can you speak a
little louder?… A newspaper?… No. He hasn't bought one… Yes, I'll
go on following him… I've been lucky enough to find a really good
Vouvray in this little bar.'

By a narrow back staircase, Maigret, heavy and serious, climbed up to
the laboratories under the roof of the Palais de Justice.

He shook hands with one or two of the experts and looked over their
shoulders to see their work.

'Well, fellows?'

Nothing of any interest. The writing on the blotter could equally well
be a man's or a woman's. No fingerprints on the blotter, but many on the
outside of the folder. These had been checked. None of them belonged to
known criminals.

Sprightly Dr. Paul, with the perky little beard, had dropped in too to
see how things were going.

'Ah! Here's my friend Maigret… A strong one did that job… The first
blow missed the heart by a few millimeters, but the second went right
into the left ventricle… I can give you a tip. Standing where he was
to deliver the blow, he almost certainly was spattered with blood. It
must have spurted out like a fountain…'

There had certainly been no sign of blood on Le Cloaguen's clothes when
he was found in the kitchen. If he'd washed them, they couldn't have had
time to dry.

'Tell me, Doctor, could a woman have done it?'

'A reasonably strong one, yes. And, you know, when they're strung up,
women sometimes have a sort of nervous strength that's extraordinary.'

That didn't simplify anything!

Janvier, after only a few hours' sleep, returned to the Quai des
Orfčvres.

'Here! Take this photograph of Mascouvin and show it around in the
neighborhood of Rue Caulaincourt. See if anybody knows him…'

It wasn't a very hopeful line, but you had to try everything.

Lucas had gone to visit the countess on Rue des Pyramides. He had to
wait a long time, because she was still in bed when he arrived. When she
finally appeared, she was in a very elegant, fluffy negligee. Very
grande dame, the countess! She looked at Lucas through a lorgnette and
insisted on calling him Monsieur Policeman.

Mascouvin did indeed owe her a small sum of money. Eight hundred francs?
It might be that much, but it was a matter of no importance… Goodness
no!… She would never dream of pressing him for the money… Poor
fellow! She was sorry for him. He was rather a fish out of water at her
club. After all, he was only a modest clerk, while all the others were
men and women of the world--a retired colonel, the wife of a big
chocolate maker, the founder and head of a bank…

There were two huge rooms, furnished quite tastefully. In one of them
was a little bar, behind which was a pantry where they made the
sandwiches for those who stayed late.

'Ask her,' said Maigret when Lucas called, 'whether she knows a man
who…'

He described the man with the green sports car. The countess knew nobody
like that.

'Just a minute, Lucas! Ask in the neighborhood. It might be that someone
has seen the car. Girls have a sharp eye for a fancy car…'

Buses packed with foreigners threaded their way through the streets of
Paris, with a guide bawling out the sights through a megaphone. The
thermometer registered ninety-five in the shade. The pools were so
crowded that swimming was impossible.

'Go get me a beer, will you?' Maigret asked the PJ receptionist. 'No.
Make it two…'

At noon Lucas returned.

'No trace of the green sports car… I made a list of the members of the
bridge club. It's a registered club, and there doesn't seem to be
anything wrong with it… But it's not half such a smart place as the
old girl likes to make out. Looks so at first sight; then you notice
it's a bit motheaten. I looked into the accounts, which give the
winnings, since she gets a percentage. I was surprised to see how small
they were… As for the members--a lonely lot, I'd say. People with no
family who don't know what to do with themselves. Or unhappily married
and anxious to stay away from home as much as possible… No doubt the
countess reigns over them like a queen. There really is some style about
her, and she doubtless gives them all the feeling they're moving in
society…'

'Has Le Cloaguen ever been there?'

'He's not on the list.'

'Or his wife or his daughter?'

'Not them either.'

'What about Mademoiselle Jeanne?'

'Ah! I was coming to her… When I showed her photograph, I had the
impression the countess was uncomfortable. She didn't sound quite
natural when she asked: `Who is she?''

The waiter from the Brasserie Dauphine, who knew the Police Judiciaire
as well as if he worked there, came in and put two glasses of beer down
on the desk. Maigret drank one at a single draught. As he lifted the
other to his lips, he caught the look on Lucas's face and murmured:
'Sorry, old friend, I'm just too thirsty!'

After all, Lucas had had his chance, on his way back from the bridge
club.

Noon bells rang. Hundreds of Parisians who had a half-day hurried toward
the sea or the country.

'Hello!… Get my wife on the line, will you?'

The second glass of beer was almost empty. His two pipes lay on the desk
in front of him.

'Hello! Is that you?… What?… No. It's not to tell you I won't be
back to lunch. On the contrary. I'll be there in--let me see--about an
hour… What I want you to do is pack my brown suitcase… Yes, the
brown one… We're going to spend the weekend by the river… What?…
At Morsang… See you soon.'

'What shall I do next?' asked Lucas, who knew very well he wasn't going
to spend Sunday in the country.

And, pencil in hand, Maigret sketched out the work for all of them.

Rue Caulaincourt: Find out if anyone else noticed the green sports car.
Ask all the tradespeople, all the café waiters…

Boulevard des Batignolles: Doubt there's much to be gained by following
the old man around. Watch his wife for a change.

Place des Vosges: Just as well keep an eye on Mascouvin's house, to see
if there are any strange comings and goings.

Anything forgotten?… Oh, get the telephone people to register all
calls to the Le Cloaguens and to the countess… You never know.

As for the man with the two gold teeth, the Morals Squad and the
Gambling Squad would be looking out for him, especially at the races.

'Till Monday, Lucas.'

'Have a good time, Chief.'

Maigret had put on his hat and was making for the door, when he had
another thought.

'Just one thing more--that Mademoiselle Berthe. Perhaps it's silly, but
never mind that. I'd like to know on Monday what she's been doing over
the weekend.'

'Is she pretty?'

'Quite a peach… Nice girl too.'

And Maigret hurried down the dusty staircase of the PJ.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Four
------------
« ^ »

There are days that, without one knowing why, seem to epitomize a
season, if not a whole period of one's life, days that seem to play on
the whole scale of one's feelings. That Saturday night at Morsang and
the Sunday that followed remained for years in Maigret's memory as
symbolizing all that was meant by a summer weekend on the river, with
its easygoing pleasures and the simple joy of being alive.

The lamps, lighted after dinner under the trees… The leaves, the soft
deep green found in old tapestries… The thin white mist over the
steadily moving water of the Seine… The laughter at the tables, and
the dreamy voices of young people in love…

The Maigrets were already in bed when someone brought a phonograph out
to the terrace, and for a long time they listened to the tuneful, if not
very edifying, music and to the crunch of gravel under the dancers'
feet.

Did the superintendent really go to sleep? Their room was in the annex
of the Pretty Pigeon. It had an outside iron staircase like a ship's,
and a long balcony running right around the second floor. The rooms were
as small as cabins, whitewashed, and of cabinlike simplicity, with an
iron bed, a wash-stand, a chair, a few hooks on which to hang clothes,
and bright cretonne curtains. That night everybody slept with doors and
windows wide open to the August night.

'Do you have enough room?' whispered Madame Maigret, squeezing herself
against the wall.

No. He certainly didn't! The bed was much too narrow for two. He dozed
off, but it wasn't long before the sound of oars wormed its way into his
consciousness. It was about three o'clock. He knew at once what it
was--Isidore, the inn's jack-of-all-trades, taking the boat to go and
lift his nets.

A little later a baby started crying. Most of the people there were
young couples. There were two dentists, an insurance agent, several
girls who were saleswomen for chic Paris dressmakers--altogether a
friendly, jolly, informal crowd.

'Maigret, where are you?'

Turning over, Madame Maigret saw her husband in the half-light, leaning
over the balcony, his suspenders hanging in loops over his haunches, a
thin blue streak of smoke going up from his pipe.

'You'll be wanting to sleep all afternoon!…'

Wisps of thoughts straggled idly through his mind: Mademoiselle Jeanne
came often to the Pretty Pigeon; she danced too… The other visitors
were unaware of her profession… She was friendly with the regulars,
and in particular used to go out boating with Madame Rialand, the wife
of one of the dentists…

A train passed, on the other side of the Seine. A boat came noiselessly
toward the little dock. It was Isidore returning. He was a tall, thin,
angular man with a drooping mustache, wearing leather waders that came
right up his thighs… He walked off toward the kitchen carrying a pail
full of live roach and gudgeon.

People began to wake up. A man dressed for fishing came out of one of
the ground-floor rooms and, filling his pipe, went over to get his
tackle from a shed.

Another emerged, and the two shook hands… Isidore reappeared. He took
something, a long object wrapped in paper, from a locker in his boat and
stowed it away out of sight in another boat, which was newly painted a
pale green.

Everything that was done seemed to have a certain ritual quality, as if
it had been done on every fine Sunday morning, for the same eager
fishermen embarking at break of day.

Isidore wiped the dew off the thwarts of the green boat, then fetched
some rods and lines and laid them out carefully.

Presently a pleasant smell of coffee drifted over from the kitchen,
where one of the servants was already at work, her hair unbrushed, no
underwear under her apron.

A Monsieur Biaise occupied the room next to the Maigrets. He came out on
the balcony, nodded, and went down the iron stairs. He was one of the
most regular customers, according to Madame Roy. A quiet man,
middle-aged, punctilious about his personal appearance, and, for that
matter, about everything else.

In the kitchen, a basket was already waiting for him, with half a
chicken, a half-bottle of Burgundy, cheese, fruit, and a bottle of
mineral water. Isidore walked down with him to his boat, the green one,
which had a little outboard motor.

Little by little it grew lighter, and other fishermen, who had come no
doubt from the village on the other side, could be seen under the trees
along the riverbank. The motor was started. Alone in the stern, Monsieur
Biaise sat with his hand on the tiller, smoking a cigarette, steering
his boat upstream, a pike line ending in a spinner trailing in the wake.

'Did you sleep well…?'

'And you…?'

More people emerged from their rooms, some in dressing gowns, some only
in pajamas. The day was getting into its stride. The two maids, now
neatly dressed, ran to and fro carrying breakfast trays to the rooms.

'Are you out there, Maigret?… What are you doing?'

Nothing. Merely letting his thoughts wander… Mademoiselle Jeanne…
Curious that Madame Roy should arrive on the scene with her basket of
fish within a few minutes of the murder… Far more curious still, their
finding an old man locked in the kitchen, and no sign of the key… Was
Le Cloaguen merely pretending to know nothing of what had happened?

The children were having breakfast at little tables under the trees.
Scantily clad couples carried highly varnished canoes down to the water.
A young man with thick glasses hoisted the sail of a tiny dinghy painted
royal blue.

'Aren't you going to fish?' asked Madame Maigret.

No. He wasn't going to do anything. It was after nine o'clock when he
made up his mind to shave and dress. He breakfasted on cold sausage and
a glass of white wine. As far as the eye could see, the Seine was dotted
with rowboats, canoes, and little white sails, and every fifty yards
along each bank was a fisherman standing still as a statue.

The hours flowed by as smoothly as the river itself. Soon the tables
were being laid for lunch. Two or three carloads of people from Paris
arrived to join the guests. Madame Maigret, who could never sit idle,
had brought some embroidery. On principle, because they were spending a
day in the country, she sat on the grass, though she would have been
more comfortable in one of the many deck chairs.

The boats began to return; some of the fishermen too. Though the
enthusiasts, like Monsieur Biaise, had taken their lunch with them.

Biaise must have gone around the bend into the next reach, toward
Seine-Port, for there was no sign of his boat all afternoon. Though, it
was true, the other bank, a little upstream, was so overgrown with
rushes as to look like a sort of aquatic jungle. They formed a
convenient retreat for lovers, and his boat too might well be hidden by
them.

Isidore was always busy. He drew off the wine, drove the car to Corbeil
to fetch the meat, and caulked the seams of a leaky boat.

At three o'clock Maigret was dozing in a deck chair. Madame Maigret kept
a protective eye on him, almost ready to tell the people around them to
keep quiet.

He was, however, only on the borderline of sleep, sufficiently conscious
to hear the telephone ring. He looked at his watch, got up, and reached
the house just as one of the maids ran out to say: 'Monsieur Maigret,
you're wanted on the phone.'

It was Lucas, who had been given Boulevard des Batignolles and told to
call at three.

'Is that you, Chief?'

Ah! There was a slightly penitent tone in the sergeant's voice.

'Something terrible's happened, though I assure you I took every
possible precaution… Several times during the morning I noticed that
one of the curtains moved, but nobody could possibly have known what I
was, because I was dressed up as a tramp…'

'Idiot!'

'What?… What did you say?'

Everybody in the Police Judiciaire knew that Maigret hated anything in
the nature of a disguise. But there was no stopping Lucas, who loved
nothing better than to act a part.

'Well, Chief, at eleven o'clock…'

'Who came out?'

'The woman. She didn't so much as glance around, but walked off toward
Place Clichy, where she took the Métro… I followed, but…'

'She gave you the slip!'

'How did you know?… She got out at Saint-Jacques. You can imagine what
it was like on a Sunday. Not a soul around… except for one solitary
taxi. She made straight for it, got in, and drove off. I rushed around
trying to find another… No luck…'

'Of course not…'

'I took the number of hers… Well, Chief, it was fake. There was no
such number registered… After changing my clothes, I went back to
Boulevard des Batignolles.'

'So you're Lucas again!'

'Yes… The concierge told me Madame Le Cloaguen hadn't yet got back.
The old man's probably locked up, since he hasn't gone out. Nor the
daughter either.'

On that hot Sunday the streets of Paris would be more than usually
empty. And the distant Boulevard Saint-Jacques had no doubt been chosen
as being the least likely place for a wandering taxi…

Maigret's face had become serious.

'All right,' he grunted.

'What shall I do next?'

'Watch the house, and call me when she gets back… By the way, have a
good look at her shoes. See if they're dirty…'

'I understand, Chief.'

Which wasn't true at all. Lucas had no idea what Maigret was thinking.
It was no more than the vaguest hunch.

The superintendent came out of the telephone booth and wandered around
the inn. He smiled at Madame Roy, who smiled at him, though her smile
was rather sad.

'When I think of that poor woman, Superintendent…'

'Do you know if she had any particular friend among her clients?'

'No. I don't know that she had. She kept to herself… Her table was
over there. Every time I catch sight of it, tears come to my eyes… She
adored children. That was probably why she was friendly with the
dentist's wife, Madame Rialand, who has two, Monique and Jean-Claude…'

Maigret stood on the threshold. He no longer looked as if he was
enjoying a beautiful Sunday. One detail worried him: that solitary taxi
standing at the Saint-Jacques station. No question of its being an
accident. It had been waiting for her. And it meant that the people
involved in this affair were well-organized professionals.

Had that nervous little Madame Le Cloaguen disappeared for good? Somehow
the superintendent couldn't bring himself to believe it. Then why should
she have found it necessary to escape from police observation for a few
hours? To meet someone? To take something--a document, for instance--to
where it would be out of their reach? To…

A distant but persistent throbbing caught Maigret's ears. He recognized
it at once as the sound of the little motor on Monsieur Blaise's boat.
Looking up, he saw it approaching, the bow lifted right out of the
water, and a minute or two later he watched the fisherman, lounging in
the stern, turn his boat in a wide circle, bring it alongside the dock,
and cut the motor.

Two or three people who'd been strolling about, Maigret among them, went
down to the dock as he arrived. Isidore too went down, to tie up the
boat.

'Any luck, Monsieur Biaise?'

And he, not one to make a fuss, casually answered: 'A couple of pike…
Not too bad…'

He opened the locker. In a cloth were two pike with grass around them to
keep them fresh.

Biaise caught Maigret's eye and, as he had in the morning, gave him a
reserved nod, as one does in a country inn.

He stepped out of the boat and strolled toward his room. Maigret hadn't
failed to notice his shoes, which were devoid of any trace of dirt.

Isidore took charge of his fishing tackle. He looked up at Maigret when
the latter, with the air of an ignorant townsman, asked: 'Did he catch
them with a spinner?'

'I don't think so… I gave him some live bait, and he probably used
that… The chief thing is to know where to go. Monsieur Biaise knows
the good fishing spots, and it isn't often he comes back empty-handed.'

'Do you mind if I have a look?'

Maigret stepped down into the boat, almost overturning it. He stooped
and picked up one of the pike.

'Not bad at all!'

'Middling!… Six or seven pounds…'

But a sharp look had come into Isidore's eyes, and he took the fish from
the superintendent's hand.

'Excuse me. I must get them wrapped up. He'll certainly want to take
them back to Paris…'

And Isidore went off to the kitchen.

'What are you doing, Maigret?' asked his wife placidly.

Nothing. He wasn't doing anything. He was just waiting for something…
He pretended to be interested in a little sailboat that was trying to
move upstream, though there was hardly a breath of wind.

There! He had it! A sudden spurt of joy in the middle of his chest!… A
flash of triumph in his eyes!… After all, you couldn't help getting a
kick out of a thing like that… And Maigret had known it was coming…
Yet it was not just intuition, based on shaky details. It was a good
deal of luck.

The luck, for instance, of a narrow bed for two on a hot night, which
had driven him out to the balcony of the annex before the break of day,
to witness Isidore's actions.

He hadn't been watching for anything in particular, but as an idle
onlooker he had noticed everything. He had seen the man take something
long and white from the locker of his own boat and stow it away in the
one Monsieur Biaise was going to use. Isidore had spoken of live bait,
but the long parcel certainly wasn't that. The live bait was in a can
that had holes pierced in the lid…

Though Maigret had noticed everything, he had thought nothing of it. Why
should he?

It was Lucas's telephone call… From that moment Maigret's mind had
been groping…

Then those two pike… Maigret had had a good look at them. He had done
a little fishing in his day. If he'd never been an expert, he at least
knew the technique.

One thing he knew was that a pike is the most voracious of all
fresh-water fish, and nothing is harder than to take the hook out of its
mouth. Sometimes you had to cut right down to the stomach.

Blaise's pike, however, hadn't a wound--not even a scratch… They
hadn't been caught on a line at all, but in one of Isidore's nets!

When Maigret had picked up the pike, Isidore had given him a sharp look,
and the superintendent wasn't in the least surprised now to see the man
come from the kitchen and slink around behind the inn to the annex,
where he went up the iron stairs and slipped furtively into Blaise's
room.

To let Biaise know!

Dear Madame Maigret! With wifely solicitude she said quietly: 'You ought
to have brought a book… You don't seem to know what to do with
yourself.'

Yes. Isidore was certainly eyeing him as he came down the iron stairs,
moving rather like a cat or a poacher.

'Why don't you sit down?'

Blaise's window was open, and he could be seen changing into his Paris
clothes.

'Tell me, Madame Roy…'

'Yes, Superintendent?'

A few question asked in a casual tone of voice…

Yes, Monsieur Biaise came by train on Saturday evenings, and caught the
six o'clock train back on Sundays. He would have to be off soon to catch
the ferry above the dam.

No, he never came by car.

Women? What a funny idea! He didn't seem to bother with them. No, he
certainly never came to the Pretty Pigeon with one.

What? In one of the houses on the other bank?… She had never thought
of such a thing! An absurd idea, since he spent his whole day fishing…
And anyhow, the few villas on the other side were occupied by most
respectable Paris families. There were the Mallets, who had a big
river-transport business. Their office was on the Quai Voltaire… Then
there were the Durroys, an elderly couple who…

'Hush! Here he comes!'

Though he must have been about Maigret's age, Biaise looked considerably
younger. He was obviously a man who took good care of himself and saw to
it that nothing interfered with the smooth tenor of his life.

'Well. Madame Roy…'

'I hear you've had a good day's fishing, Monsieur Biaise.'

'Pretty fair…'

In a slightly teasing tone she went on: 'And a good nap too? Getting up
as early as you do, a little sleep when your boat's in the reeds?'

'I never sleep in the daytime,' he answered coldly.

'No offense meant, I assure you. Only just now Monsieur Maigret was
saying to me…'

A keen look from Biaise. A little too keen, too spontaneous. Could he
not know who the superintendent was?

The telephone rang again. Maigret was not surprised to hear Lucas's
voice once more.

'She's back, Chief. Not in a taxi. She walked from the direction of Rue
d'Amsterdam.'

'What about her shoes?'

'Dirty… As soon as she'd gone in, the old man came out. He seemed
quite calm, and started his walk as usual… I have an inspector
watching while I call you… What do I do next?'

That was Lucas's usual question. Maigret gave him minute instructions.

'Well,' he said, returning to Madame Roy, 'so Monsieur Biaise has
gone…'

He looked into the distance, where the ferry was just crossing the
stream, but he didn't see the man.

'How is it he's not crossing, Madame Roy?'

'Just as you were called to the telephone, there were some other people
leaving by car.'

'People he knew?'

'No, I don't think so… In fact, I'm sure he didn't, by the way he
spoke to them. He asked them if they'd mind giving him a lift as far as
Corbeil, because he was afraid of missing his train.'

'Did he take his fish with him?'

'Oh, yes. He had the package under his arm.'

'Whose car was it? Do you know the number?'

She looked bewildered. 'I don't know. They'd only dropped in for
something to drink. Whatever are you thinking of, Superintendent? A man
like Monsieur Biaise!… I always ask his advice when I have a little
money to invest. He knows everything about stocks and bonds…'

'Do you know his address in Paris?'

'I couldn't tell you offhand. You'll find him in the telephone book…
But really, I can't imagine what makes you think…'

'I don't think anything, Madame Roy… Here we are… B… Bardamont…
Berger… Biaise, H., 25 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette…'

Madame Roy smiled uneasily. 'Only I don't understand… I can't see why
you… But, of course, they always say the police suspect everybody on
principle!'

'May I use your telephone again?'

Corbeil. The stationmaster. No, the Paris train hadn't yet come in. Due
in two or three minutes… Description?… Right… Call you back.

Paris. Police Judiciaire.

'25 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette… Who's on duty?… Dupré?… All right.
But tell him to try to look natural…'

Madame Roy went back to her kitchen. She was annoyed.

'Give me a small calvados.'

Maigret sipped it while he waited for the call from Corbeil. When it
came, he was not surprised to learn that nobody answering to Monsieur
Blaise's description had boarded the Paris train.

Two hours later, the roads were thick with cars returning to the city.
At the Pretty Pigeon, the remaining guests were just sitting down to
dinner when the telephone rang again. This time it was Dupré, to say
that Biaise had not yet returned home.

'Are we spending another night here?' asked Madame Maigret. 'I'm
thinking about that narrow bed… Not that I mind for myself. It's you
I'm bothered about. You got hardly any sleep last night…'

Never mind about that. They'd stay. Later on, when Isidore went down to
see that the boats were properly tied up, Maigret was standing by the
water's edge with an inscrutable look on his face.

'They're a funny lot, aren't they?' he said suddenly.

'Who are?'

'Fishermen. Can't bear to come back empty-handed. It's their pride…
They rely on you to…'

At first Isidore was taken aback. Then he grinned and gave Maigret a
wink.

'For one of our best customers,' he said, 'we couldn't very well…'

The phonograph was brought out again, but this time there were only
three couples to dance under the big trees.

Eleven o'clock. Telephone. Dupré at last.

'Monsieur Biaise has just shown up… What?… Pike, did you say?… No,
I didn't see any pike… No, he wasn't carrying anything… You want me
to stay, Chief?… Right. I understand.'

Hundreds of Parisians were returning, the smell of the country still in
their nostrils, their cars full of wild flowers gathered in the woods.

'Hello, Chief!'

Lucas again.

'Nothing… The old man got home at seven o'clock. Since then nobody's
left… I guess they're all in bed now. There's no sign of a light…
I'm turning over to Janvier… Good night, Chief.'

It was rather like the curfew of olden days: 'Citizens, sleep in peace.'

The final call was from the man on duty on Rue Caulaincourt.

'Nothing to report…'

Nevertheless, on that beautiful Sunday, something had happened, though
it was too soon to say what. All that had been visible so far was like
those little bubbles bursting on the surface of the water, which reveal
the presence of a fish pushing its nose into the weeds on the bottom.

'Suppose we ask for another room? Then you can have a bed all to
yourself…'

The moon rose. The phonograph stopped, and the gravel crunched under the
feet of the last couple as they made their way inside.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Five
------------
« ^ »

That afternoon Maigret was not far from being ashamed of his profession.
From time to time, like an actor whose face suddenly relaxes as he steps
off the stage, he slipped into the next room to join Lucas, who was
feeling much the same as his chief.

'Still nothing?' the sergeant's eyes asked.

Still nothing. The superintendent gulped down a mouthful of beer and
went over to the window, where he stood, cross, anxious, a look of
disgust on his face.

'What's she doing?' he asked.

'She's getting more and more worked up. She's given up asking for you.
Says she wants to see the director.'

It was a good thing Madame Le Cloaguen was here; she provided the one
bit of comic relief. It was Octave Le Cloaguen who had been summoned to
the Quai des Orfčvres, two hours ago, but when the taxi arrived, it was
the thin, wiry woman who had jumped out, leaving her husband behind.

Maigret had watched the scene from his window, had smiled, and given
instructions to one of his men.

She had given her name to the receptionist. 'Le Cloaguen.'

'Do you have an appointment? Are you Octave Le Cloaguen?'

'I want to see the superintendent. I can explain it all to him.'

That was funny enough. But while she, arguing all the way, was taken to
the waiting room--aptly named--another man went down to get her husband,
patiently sitting in the taxi.

'Did my wife say I was to go up?'

'The superintendent wants you.'

'Where's my wife?'

Three hours had gone by since then, during which the old man in the
faded overcoat had been sitting in the same chair, facing the window, in
Maigret's office.

Each time the latter returned, after a few moments of relaxation in
Lucas's room, he found Le Cloaguen's light-blue eyes turned on him with
the same look, the look of a dog who knows it has nothing much to expect
from humans, but also that there's no escape from their domination.

There was no mistaking it: that was the meaning of his look. And it was
painful to see, for one couldn't help realizing the years of hopeless
suffering that had produced it.

Two or three times he had asked: 'Where's Madame Le Cloaguen?'

'She's waiting for you.'

That didn't reassure him. He knew her quick temper and domineering
character, and couldn't possibly imagine her waiting patiently.

Maigret had started his interrogation in the classic manner, ŕ la
chansonnette, speaking in a friendly, casual tone, as though he attached
little importance to the questions he was asking, as though he
considered them merely a matter of form.

'There's a small point I want to get cleared up. I forgot to ask you the
other day… When there was that special knock on the door, Mademoiselle
Jeanne was reading the cards for you…?'

Le Cloaguen listened carefully but with no sign of comprehension, and he
made no answer.

'Mademoiselle Jeanne pushed you into the kitchen and shut the door…
Now what I want to know is whether she gathered up the cards or whether
they were still on the table… Take your time. Think about it
carefully… The examining magistrate attaches--God knows why!--an
importance to that question that I consider exaggerated.'

Le Cloaguen didn't move. He sighed. Once again his hands were resting on
his knees, those remarkable hands that had attracted Maigret's attention
in the taxi.

'Come on! Try to picture the scene… It was hot. The window was open
onto the balcony… The many-colored cards were lying on the marble
Louis XVI table…'

The old man's eyes seemed to be saying: 'Can't you understand what
you're doing to me? You're torturing a poor creature who can't stand up
for himself…'

Maigret, ashamed, turned his eyes away, and murmured: 'Answer me,
please… This is not an official interrogation. Your answers are not
being written down… Were the cards lying on the table?'

'Yes.'

'You're sure?'

'Yes.'

Maigret went over and opened the door. There was a frown on his face and
an irritable ring in his voice as he called to Lucas: 'Look here,
Sergeant!… What was that you told me about Mademoiselle Jeanne's never
using cards? Monsieur Le Cloaguen tells me a different story, and I see
no reason to think he's lying…'

A nasty trick no doubt. As a former minister of the Interior said, the
police are not choirboys. Don't their adversaries use every dirty trick
devised by man?

'It's quite right,' answered Lucas. 'We've checked up on that. There
wasn't a card in the place. Mademoiselle Jeanne used a crystal ball.'

'Well, Monsieur Le Cloaguen? What am I to make of that?… But perhaps
you didn't quite understand my question. Think again. Were there really
cards on the table?'

Beads of sweat stood out on the old man's forehead.

'I… I don't know…' He faltered.

'That's all, Lacas… Forgive me if I touch on a rather delicate matter,
Monsieur Le Cloaguen. But I'm not blind, and I couldn't help noticing
that your family life is not exactly happy… That being the case, you
have perhaps, like many men your age, tried to find consolation
elsewhere. You looked for a little feminine sympathy, a little human
warmth… Am I right?… From the very beginning, I found it difficult
to believe you're the sort of man to have your fortune told… And if
you were hustled like that into the kitchen, wasn't it because you
hadn't gone to Rue Caulain-court as one of Mademoiselle Jeanne's
clients?'

The old man didn't dare say yes. He didn't dare say no. All he could do
was wonder what new blow the superintendent was about to deliver each
time he reappeared from the next room and when he paused to light his
pipe with exasperating slowness.

'You're the only person who can help us. We know precious little about
that poor woman. Merely that she came to Paris from somewhere or other
and worked for a dressmaker, first sewing, then as a model. Later she
had her own dressmaking place on Rue Saint-Georges, called Chez Jeanne.
That name stuck to her… The dressmaking business wasn't a success, and
she went to live on Rue Caulaincourt… And that's all… What about her
family? Who were her friends?… That's what we want to discover.'

'I don't know anything.'

'Come on, now… I can quite understand your discretion. But don't
forget that our only aim is to punish your friend's murderer…'

It was terrible. Suddenly the old man began to weep. Hot tears ran down
his cheeks. He didn't make a sound. He didn't make the slightest
movement--not even to wipe them away--but sat just as before, with his
long knotty hands still on his knees. Maigret had to turn his head away.
To hide his own feelings, he went to the window and stared at a string
of barges being towed down the river.

'Of course this is no business of your wife's, and you can count on me
not to repeat anything to her… Since you're well off, I take it that
you helped Mademoiselle Jeanne financially… Certainly someone helped
her. Her clientele wasn't large enough to keep her going--not in the way
she lived. Although there was nothing luxurious about her life, she
seems to have been comfortable… You have an income of two hundred
thousand a year, haven't you?'

No answer. Maigret looked over some papers on his desk.

'One of my men made some inquiries about you, and what we've found out
is very much to your credit. It seems that thirty years ago you were the
doctor on board a ship going to the Far East. One of the passengers was
a rich Argentine breeder, traveling with his daughter…'

Maigret pretended to consult documents on his desk.

'Yellow fever broke out on board, and it seems to have been due entirely
to you that panic was averted. And you saved the life of the young girl
into the bargain… Then you came down with the disease yourself, and
were put ashore at the next port… Among the passengers you were quite
a hero, and the rich Argentine, in gratitude for what you had done,
settled on you an income of two hundred thousand francs a year for the
rest of your life… I can only congratulate you, Monsieur Le
Cloaguen… Returning to France, you married the young lady you were
engaged to. You left the sea and gave up the practice of medicine. You
settled down in Saint-Raphaël to lead the pleasant life of a man of
private means… Unfortunately, as she grew older, your wife became more
and more penny-pinching, more and more domineering. Since you came to
Paris the situation has changed for the worse…'

The old man seemed only to be wondering how long the ordeal would last.
Again and again it seemed to be over. Maigret would get up from his
chair and make for the door, smiling, like a man whose job was finished,
then change his mind and ask one more question--one last point that
needed clearing up.

'By the way… that finger of yours… I understand you had a little
accident. At Saint-Raphaël, wasn't it, just before you left? You were
chopping wood. I suppose you liked to do it for the exercise, since you
had two servants… You missed your aim and cut off the top joint of
your index finger. Of the right hand, unfortunately. You must find it
rather a handicap.

'Well! I'm finished.'

The old man seemed by now to understand Maigret's technique, for he made
no move to get up. But his eyes seemed to ask: 'Is it really over?'

Not yet!

'Yesterday, someone was talking to me about you. I think I've got his
photograph somewhere… Here we are!…'

It was a snapshot of Monsieur Biaise, taken without his knowledge as he
walked along the street.

'I've forgotten his name… What is it?… He seemed to know you quite
well…'

It didn't work. Le Cloaguen looked at it blankly. If his face expressed
anything at all, it was relief, as though he had been afraid of
something else.

'You don't remember him?… Oh, well, never mind… He said it was some
years since he'd seen you…'

Maigret went into the next room, where Lucas greeted him with a wink.

'If you keep him much longer there'll be sparks flying in the waiting
room. His wife's beside herself. She's going to write to the papers! She
demands to see the director! In fact, she's going to make real trouble.'

Well, she'd been waiting more than three hours. Yet that was nothing to
the poor man's ordeal with Maigret. Maigret wasn't going to be deterred,
however. The man had him guessing. There was some mystery there, and he
couldn't rest till he had unearthed it. It was exasperating… At the
same time, he couldn't help feeling a strange sympathy for the wretched
man, a sympathy that wasn't merely pity.

So the chansonnette continued.

'Dear, dear, we don't seem to be getting anywhere, Monsieur Le Cloaguen.
The examining magistrate has just called me to say more evidence has
come to light, which makes things more complicated than ever.

'A man who lives across from 67 bis Rue Caulaincourt has come forward to
say that just after five o'clock last Friday he saw a man throw
something out of one of Mademoiselle Jeanne's windows. We wondered what
happened to that key… It's been found…'

'I don't care,' sighed Le Cloaguen.

'Yet it makes your position worse, doesn't it?'

Maigret laid a key on the desk.

'But you know very well it's not true, Superintendent,' murmured the old
man with a gentleness and simplicity that were disarming.

'Look, Monsieur Le Cloaguen!… Why can't you be frank? Can't you see
that you're putting yourself in a very awkward situation?… There you
are, a wealthy retired doctor who has had a career of distinguished
service to be proud of… And the next thing we see is a wretched
creature who wanders aimlessly along the streets and who is treated by
his own family as a person of no account and locked up to keep him out
of the way… What happened to produce such a change?… Why did you
leave Saint-Raphaël and come to Paris?… Why…?'

Le Cloaguen raised his head. His pale-blue eyes had a tragic candor in
them as he said very quietly: 'You know why… I'm mad.'

'What you mean, I think, is that other people--your wife and daughter
perhaps--have tried to persuade you that you're mad.'

He shook his head. Firmly, though without the least vehemence, he
repeated: 'No. I'm mad.'

'Try to realize the seriousness of what you're saying. If you are
mad--and I don't believe it for a moment--there would be no reason why
you shouldn't have killed Mademoiselle Jeanne… For we never know what
a madman may be capable of… You suddenly get the idea while you're
sitting in her apartment, and for no reason at all you kill her… Then,
recovering your senses, you realize the enormity of what you've done. To
escape the consequences, you hide in the kitchen, locking yourself in
and throwing the key out the window…'

No answer.

'Was that what happened?'

Maigret was almost afraid the old man would say yes, though it would
bring the case to an end and save a lot of trouble. But the response was
quite otherwise. It had taken him the best part of four hours to get an
answer that really sounded as though it meant something.

'I'm mad, but I didn't kill Jeanne.'

'You see! You call her Jeanne. So you admit there was some sort of
intimacy between you… Why not tell me all about it?… You needn't be
ashamed. We're used to hearing confessions…'

'I've nothing to say… I'm tired… very tired…'

Simply, humbly he added: 'And thirsty.'

Once again Maigret went into the next room. When he reappeared he was
holding a large glass of beer. The old man took a long draught, his
Adam's apple going up and down, up and down.

'Where did your wife go on Sunday between eleven and four?'

'I didn't know she went anywhere.'

'Were you locked in your room?'

No answer. Le Cloaguen hung his head. What wouldn't Maigret have given
for one moment's real frankness! Innumerable men, of all sorts and
conditions, had sat in that chair at the Quai des Orfčvres, to be
subjected to the same unremitting interrogation, yet none of them had
been so completely baffling. It was intriguing, and it was irritating.
For an instant, anger almost got the better of him, and he felt like…

'Look, Le Cloaguen, you really can't pretend you know nothing at
all--not even why you're locked up in your room like a mangy dog…'

'It's because I'm mad.'

'A madman wouldn't admit it.'

'Yet I'm mad, all the same… Really, Superintendent, I've done nothing
wrong. I didn't kill her, and you're making a mistake in…'

'Then, damn it, tell me about it!'

'What do you want me to say?'

Either he was the stupidest man on earth or else…

'Look me in the face… Here on my desk I have a warrant for your
arrest. If your answers aren't satisfactory, I can have you locked up
here and now.'

The situation became even more baffling. For instead of being
frightened, the old man seemed reassured. The prospect of going to
prison seemed to please him.

Perhaps anything was preferable to the tyranny of those two women.

'As man to man, tell me, why don't you put up a fight? Why don't you
stand up for yourself? All your neighbors talk about you, some with
pity, some with contempt…'

'My wife looks after me.'

'By letting you wear the same coat summer and winter--a coat a tramp
would be ashamed of?… By not giving you enough money to buy
tobacco?… Yesterday, you were seen picking up a cigarette butt in the
street, like a pauper--you, a retired doctor with an income of two
hundred thousand francs a year!'

No answer. Maigret got angrier.

'You're locked up in a filthy little room that was probably never meant
for anything but a storeroom. You're kept hidden from their friends as
though you're a leper!…'

'I assure you they look after me.'

'You mean they don't let you actually die of starvation!… And you know
very well why, Monsieur Le Cloaguen. The money that rich Argentine
settled on you was settled on you for life. For life! Do you understand
that? You talk as if it was kind of them to keep you alive!'

Was it possible that the old man was a saint?

'I assure you, Superintendent…'

'I think you'd better go before I lose my temper… Listen! I'm not
going to arrest you yet. I'm going to give you a little time to think
things over. And the sooner you make up your mind to tell the truth, the
better it will be for you… Lucas! Lucas!'

Lucas came in and noted Maigret's red face. His chief looked really
angry.

'Bring in Madame Le Cloaguen.'

And once again the old man's hands began to tremble and his forehead was
covered with beads of sweat. Was it possible that those two women
actually beat him?

'Come in, madame… And may I ask you to leave the talking to me?…
Silence!… I know you're upset with the hours of waiting, but you've
only yourself to blame… Don't interrupt me, please!… It was your
husband who was summoned here, not you, and it seems to me he's old
enough to come by himself. Another time, you won't be allowed into the
building… But since you brought him here, you can take him away again.
I don't know whether we'll want him again, but he'll probably have to be
examined by doctors to establish whether he's sane or not… You can go
now… Did you hear me? I said you could go. And if you have any
complaints, make them to anybody you want… Good-bye, madame…'

When the door was shut, Maigret heaved a deep sigh. Lucas was quite
concerned to see his chief in such a state, but the latter's features
soon relaxed, and he looked at the sergeant with a rueful smile.

'Well?'

'Nothing, Lucas… absolutely nothing… I don't see that woman in the
picture, that's all… I only wish we had found her in the kitchen on
Rue Caulaincourt…'

Lucas smiled. Never had he seen Maigret so angry.

Now, suddenly, the superintendent became pensive. His thoughts seemed to
hang in suspense as he gazed out at the luminous haze over the Seine and
the seething multicolored mass of humanity swarming over the Pont
Saint-Michel.

'What are you thinking?'

'Nothing… We must find out where that woman was on Friday afternoon,
exactly where… You see to that.'

'Why don't you ask her what she was up to on Sunday?'

'Because!' Because he was convinced she was expecting it and had her
answer ready. In fact he had a shrewd suspicion that her anger was due,
more than anything else, to her not having been given the opportunity to
use it. At that moment, as she drove home in a taxi, she was no doubt
prey to nameless terrors.

'Do you think…'

'I don't think anything at all. Who knows?… Perhaps I'll go to
Saint-Raphaël…As for that other phenomenon, our idiotic
Mascouvin…have you checked the Hôtel-Dieu?'

'His condition's satisfactory. His sister went to see him, but he didn't
know her. It'll be a few more days…'

'And the man with the green sports car?'

'Nothing. We've checked up on twenty green sports cars and drawn a blank
each time. He's probably changed cars by now.'

There was a knock on the door. It was the receptionist.

'The director wants you, Superintendent.'

Maigret and Lucas exchanged glances. It was never good, in the middle of
a case, to be sent for by the director. It meant he wanted you to
explain things you couldn't, or someone was trying to get in your way,
complaints were being made, God knows what.

Maigret wasn't in the mood to accept any advice, still less a reprimand.
The very way he stuck his pipe in his mouth was sufficient warning.

He went through the padded door.

'You sent for me?'

In silence, the director, perhaps displeased, perhaps amused, handed
Maigret an express letter just delivered.

Monsieur Director of the Police Judiciaire,

I have the honor to bring certain facts to your notice and to request an
explanation of them. If the latter is not forthcoming, I shall feel
obliged to lodge a formal complaint elsewhere.

On Sunday last, returning from my usual weekend at Morsang-sur-Seine, I
learned that an individual who said he was an inspector from the Police
Judiciaire had shortly before had an interview with my concierge, whom
he had questioned at length concerning me, my financial resources, and
my daily habits.

My concierge failed to ask this individual for any proof of his
identity, and from what she told me 1 believe him to have been an
undesirable person masquerading as a policeman.

I looked out of my window and immediately noticed a man in a little café
called the Old Pouilly on Place Saint-Georges. This man was obviously
keeping my house under observation.

I live alone and take my meals in a restaurant, and I could only suppose
he was waiting for my departure to break into my apartment.

I make no secret of the fact that I speculate on the stock market, as
any honest French citizen has a right to. I keep a considerable sum of
money at home, as well as a number of bonds, and these would provide a
very lucrative haul.

I immediately called the local police and explained the matter, asking
for protection. Soon after, a uniformed policeman arrived in Rue
Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.

To my great surprise, I saw the man who had been watching the house
greet the newcomer. The two men shook hands, and a moment later the one
in uniform shrugged his shoulders and went away.

The next morning, the watcher was still there. He was joined by a
middle-aged person, coarse-featured and badly dressed, with a pipe stuck
in his mouth, who went with him for a glass in the Old Pouilly.

Seeing Maigret's scowl, the director suppressed his smile. It was
obvious that the superintendent was not amused.

I could not help thinking that an organized gang was after my money.
Throughout the whole of Monday I was followed by a succession of
individuals of various shapes and sizes who had, however, one thing in
common--they were unprepossessing.

Finally, when I paid my usual weekly visit to Proud and Drouin, who take
care of my investments, I discovered that the pipe-smoking gentleman had
already been there to inquire whether I was one of their clients.

I would be grateful, Monsieur Director, if you would give your immediate
attention to this matter and put an end to a state of affairs that gives
me much anxiety.

In the hope you will lose no time in dealing with the matter,

I have the honor to be,

Your obedient servant,

Emile Biaise

'Well, Maigret?'

The look on the superintendent's face had not changed as he read the
letter. He had not been amused at the references to himself.

'What do you think of it?'

'I think Monsieur Biaise is laughing at you.'

'And at you too, perhaps?'

'At me too.'

'Is it true you went to Proud and Drouin?'

'It is… And I had extremely good reason… It's too long to tell you
in detail now… You remember Mascouvin, who brought us the famous
blotter… Well, he works for Proud and Drouin.'

'What's he got to do with Biaise?'

'Wait! Who discovered the crime? A certain Madame Roy, who owns the
Pretty Pigeon at Morsang…'

'I still don't see…'

'Mademoiselle Jeanne went frequently to Morsang. Monsieur Biaise goes
there almost every week. And he goes to catch fish that have already
been caught…'

'Tell me, Maigret, should I begin to see…'

'I'm beginning to think it makes sense. Mascouvin informs us of a crime
before it is committed… Mademoiselle Jeanne is killed at the given
time… Madame Roy discovers the body a few minutes later… Monsieur
Biaise is a client of Proud and Drouin and a client of Madame Roy… But
Le Cloaguen…'

Maigret mused for a moment.

'Two points of contact already: Proud and Drouin, and Morsang… I think
I'll go this evening and take a bridge lesson…'

'A bridge lesson?'

'At the countess's… She seems to be a very distinguished woman. She's
come down in the world, however, and has to scrape along by running a
bridge club for lonely people in her rooms on Rue des Pyramides… I
wonder if Biaise ever goes there.'

'Suppose he does?'

'It wouldn't prove anything, I know. But it would be a curious
coincidence, another link with Mascouvin. So far they only connect via
Proud and Drouin… If only Le Cloaguen…'

The director shrugged his shoulders, which meant: Well, this is not the
time for me to be contrary.

He held out his hand.

'Good luck, old fellow!… As for Biaise, perhaps you'd better use a
certain discretion. He seems to be rather touchy and only too ready to
make trouble… Sounds as though he has a deputy up his sleeve…'

Certainly, certainly, Monsieur Director, Maigret said to himself, but
you have not just spent nearly four hours with the haunting Le Cloaguen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Six
-----------
« ^ »

The name Picpus had by now become famous. Not only had innumerable
experts looked through their microscopes at the upstrokes and
downstrokes of his blotted words, but millions searched daily for his
name in the headlines of their morning papers. The name had become a
standing joke.

'You haven't seen Picpus?'

'Well, how's Picpus today?'

And taxi drivers, ever resourceful, added a new epithet, for their
careless fellow drivers: 'What do you think you're doing, Picpus?'

It was a fly, a common house fly, that betrayed his identity. Maigret
had got up later than usual that morning, because he hadn't left the
countess's until two in the morning. The air had not lost its morning
coolness, however, though the sun was already gilding the houses in a
way that promised another stifling day.

Maigret always loved wandering through the streets while Paris made its
morning ablutions and, instead of going straight from Boulevard
Richard-Lenoir to the Quai des Orfčvres, he made a detour through Place
de la République.

He had cut an absurd figure the evening before on Rue des Pyramides. The
moment he arrived, the countess had rushed up to him in a swirl of
floating gauze, which gave her the appearance of a grande coquette of
the Théâtre-Français.

'Hush! Don't say a word! Come this way, my dear Superintendent… If you
only knew what a flutter I'm in to receive such a celebrated person in
my home…'

She led him into her boudoir. She talked. She went on talking. She
begged Maigret not to make a scandal in her salon… The members of the
club were such well-educated people, such well-connected people…

'Only just now I was saying to the prince…'

Her hands were loaded with rings encrusted with imitation jewels. One
hand stayed on the superintendent's knee as she looked appealingly into
his face, while he stared back.

'Would you really like to spend the evening with us?… No, I don't know
a Monsieur Biaise… Sometimes a member brings a friend along… No, I
can't remember anybody like that… We're really quite a small circle…
The whole thing's entirely friendly, though of course everyone
contributes something toward the expenses in these difficult times…'

Five minutes later she was introducing Maigret as a retired colonel,
regardless of the fact that his photograph appeared regularly in the
papers. Then she sat him down at her own table, the one for beginners,
to give him a lesson.

Between hands she found time to visit all the other tables, to say in a
dramatic stage whisper: 'You know who he is, of course… He's the
famous Superintendent Maigret. Only he's here incognito, to get my
advice about something.'

Now, as he wandered along the street, he told himself that Paris was
full of strange people, mysterious or amazing, who never came to light
until something happened.

He reached the Café des Sports on Place de la République and went in.
Hesitating between the bar and the lounge, he finally chose the latter,
and as he looked for a table it suddenly occurred to him to sit in
Joseph Mascouvin's favorite place. As he did so, his mind automatically
reverted to the strange note, to Picpus. Why Picpus? It was the name of
a busy street and a small cemetery.

'Waiter! A glass of beer, please.'

'Right away, Superintendent.'

With his sleeves rolled up, Nestor had been cleaning the bar. There was
only one other customer, a girl with a suitcase, presumably from the
country, who sat over a cup of coffee, waiting for someone.

'How's that poor Monsieur Mascouvin getting along, Superintendent?'

Nestor bent over to put the beer down on the table. Maigret looked at
his bald head, or, rather, he watched a fly that had lighted on it.

The fly crawled for a moment across the bald head, then flew off, to
settle next on a calendar. Maigret's eye wandered with it, and suddenly
a queer noise came from his throat and he almost jumped up from his
seat. The astonished waiter looked around to see what could have
startled a police inspector famous all over France for his placidity. He
saw nothing.

But Maigret had discovered Picpus!

Yes, there was Picpus. On the wall right in front of Joseph Mascouvin's
usual seat. He must have been staring right at it when he studied the
writing on the blotter.

What a laugh the public would have if a picture of Picpus appeared in
the papers!

Directly over the slot machine hung an enormous calendar, whose real
purpose, while telling you the date, was to advertise a firm of
furniture movers.

When you move, call…

In bright colors, a sort of vulgar Hercules was depicted. He wore a
striped jersey inflated like a balloon by his enormous muscles. He had a
bright red face, and he winked roguishly at the public as he casually
lifted a wardrobe with one hand.

When you move, call…

Beneath the beefy wardrobe-juggler, in large letters, was:

PICPUS

And in smaller type:

PICPUS MOVING COMPANY

101 Rue Picpus, Paris

So Picpus had never existed. At least, not as a murderer. He was no more
than the figment of an advertiser's brain.

Someone had sat in that café writing a letter. When it came to the
signature, he--or she--had hesitated. What name should he use? His eye
had wandered, had lighted on the advertisement.

Perhaps with a sly smile on his lips, he had signed Picpus.

So far, so good! But who had sat there writing in violet ink with the
scratchy pen that the Café des Sports provided for its customers?

Only one thing was certain: He hadn't made a mistake. He knew!

'Waiter, what do I owe you?'

Maigret would have liked to take the calendar, for his crime museum, but
not now. He'd come back and ask for it when the inquiry was finished.

Since he was only a few steps from Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle, why not
take the opportunity to call on Proud and Drouin? When he'd gone there
before, he hadn't been able to see the owners.

The building was full of offices. The stairway was gloomy.

Maigret went straight up. He had already seen the name of the firm on
all the windows of the third floor.

'Monsieur Proud, please.'

'Do you wish to see him on a personal matter?'

'Personal, yes.'

'Monsieur Proud has been dead three years,' said the receptionist with a
self-satisfied smile.

Maigret, annoyed, asked for Monsieur Drouin.

A few minutes later he was ushered into the office of Monsieur Drouin, a
mistrustful-looking man in his fifties.

'Sit down, Superintendent. I would be only too glad to be of assistance
to you, though I confess I really can't see…'

'I understand, Monsieur Drouin. But I'm afraid it's necessary for me to
ask you a few questions.'

'If it's about one of my clients, I must warn you that we maintain
absolute secrecy about their affairs. In fact, we consider ourselves as
much bound by professional secrecy as any doctor…'

'Will you tell me, Monsieur Drouin, if you consider Joseph Mascouvin an
honest employee?'

'If I didn't, I would have got rid of him long ago.'

'Does he have an important position here?'

Drouin got up and opened a door to make sure no one was listening.

'Under the circumstances, and in view of the mystery surrounding this
unhappy young man, I may as well tell you frankly that I've kept him on
more out of charity…'

'You're not satisfied with him?'

'Try to understand. I've no complaint whatever to make about him. On the
contrary. He's always the first to arrive and he's never in a hurry to
leave. He's the last person in the world to have a newspaper or a novel
tucked away, or to sneak off to smoke a cigarette. He never asks for a
day off on the grounds of someone in the family being ill, or the death
of a grandmother… The trouble with him is he's too conscientious.'

'What do you mean?'

'I suppose it does sound absurd… I've no doubt it has something to do
with his having been an orphan. He's oversensitive. Always afraid of not
doing enough. Always making mountains out of molehills… He doesn't fit
in with the others. And I can't blame them. He's touchy and hardly says
much.'

'You're quite sure he's never helped himself to any money?'

'Helped himself to money?… Really, Superintendent, that's quite
impossible. Not only for him, but for anybody else. For the simple
reason that there's no money to steal, that is, short of forging a check
on the firm's account. This isn't a shop with a cash register, you know!
We sell houses, farms, châteaux, building sites, and the money involved
runs into hundreds of thousands, if not millions. We never see any cash
in this establishment.'

'You mean to say your employee couldn't possibly have stolen a thousand
francs from you?'

'It is out of the question… As I told you, the man's character… No,
Superintendent, you're on the wrong track altogether.'

'And you keep no money here at all?'

'Only the petty cash. I was forgetting that. But he wouldn't have access
to it, and in any case there wouldn't be anything like a thousand francs
in it. Besides, if he'd taken twenty, it would have been noticed almost
at once and reported to me… No, I'm afraid…'

He rose to his feet to indicate he had other work to do.

'Just one more question, which I think you can answer without any breach
of professional etiquette… Is Monsieur Biaise a big client of yours?'

Drouin hesitated. But he was anxious to get rid of his visitor, and
somewhat reluctantly he answered:

'Not in a big way, no… Not that he isn't a man of substance. When he
first came to us, his bank references were excellent. But when it comes
to actual buying, no. He's really no more than a dabbler. And, strictly
between ourselves, more trouble than he's worth. He takes up a lot of
our time, but has bought only two or three properties in the course of
the last five years… And now, if you'll excuse me…'

He didn't offer his hand, and it was with visible satisfaction that he
shut the door behind Maigret.

The latter went down the stairs more puzzled than ever. Why should
Mascouvin have accused himself of stealing a thousand francs from his
employer?

There was a worried, anxious look on Maigret's face when he reached his
office, to learn that the examining magistrate had been waiting for him
for the last hour. There was another one who was no doubt getting
impatient and thought it was high time to get some results.

His pipe in his mouth, Maigret went the back way into the Palais de
Justice and made his way to the corridor where the examining
magistrates' offices were, and where men under criminal indictment stood
guarded by policemen, and witnesses paced up and down, looking at their
watches, wondering how much longer they would have to wait. The
atmosphere was like that in a steam room.

'Come in, Superintendent. Sit down… I've studied the report you handed
in last night and talked it over with my deputy. We're both of the same
opinion. Either your Octave Le Cloaguen…'

Why did he say 'your'?

'Well, either he is really mad--which I'm now beginning to doubt--or he
knows a lot more than he'll admit… To settle the matter, I've ordered
a medical examination for this afternoon. He'll be seen by two
psychiatrists in the presence of our Dr. Paul. What do you think?'

He was pleased with himself, It was almost as though he was throwing out
a challenge to the superintendent. He seemed to be saying: 'Of course I
know you have your methods. But they strike me as being too slow, my
poor Maigret. They're old-fashioned… And you might remember that an
examining magistrate isn't necessarily a fool and from his office he can
unravel problems the police don't understand.'

Maigret smoked in silence, and nobody could have guessed what was going
on in his mind.

'I've also sent a writ to Saint-Raphaël for evidence to be taken on
everything relating to the Le Cloaguen family and the way they lived…'

The examining magistrate was beginning to be disconcerted by Maigret's
silence. Was he offended? Might he throw his hand in, refusing to have
any more to do with the case?

'You'll excuse me, I'm sure, if I'm forcing the pace. You'll admit that
in a case of this sort, which has been given wide coverage, the public
is apt to get impatient if they think nothing is being done.'

'You're quite right, Magistrate. Only, I wonder…'

'What?'

'Nothing… I may be mistaken…'

To tell the truth, Maigret was uneasy. He pictured the old man in his
office the day before, with his strange hands resting on his knees and
tears streaming down his face. Above all, that pathetic look in his
eyes, which seemed to beg his fellow creatures not to take advantage of
his defenselessness.

It was odd that the examining magistrate should have said 'your Octave
Le Cloaguen.'… The fact was, he had hit the nail on the head!

'When does the examination take place?'

'At three o'clock. Let me see… It's eleven now… The family was
notified about half an hour ago, by messenger.'

'Where's it to be?'

'At the apartment on Boulevard des Batignolles… Though, of course, if
the doctors think it necessary, they can take him away and keep him
under observation… Will you be there?'

'Possibly.'

'Then, my dear Superintendent, I may be seeing you later…'

Admittedly, Maigret was somewhat vexed at their having gone ahead
without consulting him first, though it couldn't be denied he'd given
them an excuse by arriving so late at the Quai des Orfčvres.

But it wasn't really that that made him sulky and cross. It was
something different. Hard to explain… His Octave Le Cloaguen… Well,
yes!… He had the feeling that he was the only one capable of delving
into the old man's mind. Right from the start, in the apartment on Rue
Caulaincourt, he had been intrigued by him, and from that moment the old
ship's doctor had never left him in peace. It was about him he had been
thinking as he gazed at the Herculean Picpus with the vulgar wink. It
was about him he was thinking in Monsieur Drouin's office, though
ostensibly he was preoccupied by Mascouvin and Biaise.

'Come in, Lucas.'

Lucas was obviously aware of the steps that had been decided on in his
chief's absence, and he studied the latter out of the corner of his eye.

'Who have we got on Boulevard des Batignolles this morning?'

'Janvier.'

As Maigret stood staring out the wide-open window, a verse he had had to
learn by heart in school suddenly came back to him:

The seas are so tranquil,

So pure are the skies,

But the sailor's widow

Has tears in her eyes.

Wasn't his fate much the same? The Seine flowed by, a veritable river of
peace, and, watching the people in the streets, you would think the
whole population was basking in the August sunshine and abandoning all
care for the simple joy of being alive. Elsewhere, that same summer sun
was shining down on fishermen, on swimmers, as here a symphony of car
horns filling streets and boulevards mounted to the blue skies.

So pure are the skies…

Yes, his was a strange job! A couple of knife wounds in the back of a
woman he had never seen or heard of… An old man sweating from fear…
A clerk who throws himself into the Seine from the Pont-Neuf… A
blatant advertisement on a calendar in the Café des Sports…

'What are we going to do, Chief?'

'Monsieur Biaise?'

'At this time of the morning he'll be on his way to the Bourse. He goes
there every day… Ruel's keeping an eye on him.'

Not a sign of the green sports car or the dark man with two gold-crowned
teeth. Emma, the dairymaid, spent half her time staring out into the
street, hoping to see the beautiful car and handsome driver, half
dreading what might come of it if she did. A dozen photographs had been
shown to her, but she hadn't recognized him in any.

'Get me that travel agency near the Madeleine.'

Still with the worried look on his face, Maigret took the receiver from
Lucas.

'Hello!… Mademoiselle Berthe?… Yes, Maigret… No. On the contrary.
He's getting along nicely, and it won't be long before he's himself
again… What time do you leave your office?… At noon?… Would it
bore you to have lunch with me in a little restaurant nearby?…
What?… Good. I'll come right away.'

He took a taxi and drew up on Boulevard de la Madeleine just as all the
shops and offices were casting out their floods of employees. It wasn't
long before he spotted the little red hat and the smiling dimpled face,
which nevertheless had a slightly anxious look.

'I can assure you, mademoiselle, that I have no bad news for you. I
merely wanted to have a little talk.'

People turned around to look at them, thinking no doubt that this
middle-aged man had done pretty well for himself.

'Do you like hors-d'oeuvres?'

'Love them.'

He chose a little restaurant where he knew there was an abundant choice
and secured a table by the window. When the waiter brought a bottle of
Alsatian wine, its long thin neck protruding from an ice bucket, it did
indeed look as if the middle-aged gentleman was stepping out!

'Tell me, Mademoiselle Berthe… when your parents died and your brother
provided for your education… Take some of those mushrooms… I was
saying: When your parents died, I suppose he sent you to a boarding
school?'

'To a convent school at Montmorency.'

'It must have cost him quite a lot, didn't it?'

'I couldn't bear to think of it. I knew he didn't earn much. But he
always said he owed everything to my parents, that it was the least he
could do… I'm sure he had to deny himself a great deal to take care of
me.'

'How long did you stay there?'

'Till I was eighteen. After that, I wanted to live with him, as I told
you. It would have been so much cheaper for him. But he wouldn't listen
to me. He got the little apartment I have now, near Place des Ternes.'

'Furnished?'

'No. He said furnished apartments were generally in rather dubious
houses. Not the right thing for a girl my age.'

'That was about five years ago,' muttered Maigret pensively.

'Exactly. You've worked it out right. I'm twenty-three now.'

'Look here, mademoiselle, when we've finished our lunch would you think
it a nuisance to show your place to an old man like me?'

'Not at all… Only… what shall I say to the concierge?'

'That I'm a friend of your brother's… And now let's put our minds on
lunch. With my ridiculous questions, I've ruined your appetite.'

Other men, middle-aged like him, were eating around them, also with
young and pretty girls.

'Yes. I insist that you have dessert.'

He got a taxi.

The girl looked at her watch. 'We'll have to be quick. I must be back in
the office at two.'

A quiet street, contrasting with the noise and bustle of Place des
Ternes.

'It's here. There is an elevator.'

On the fifth floor, three rooms that were admittedly tiny, but there was
a brightness and gaiety that suited Mademoiselle Berthe.

'You see, it's quite plain…'

Maigret expected to find suites of furniture, such as are displayed in
the windows of the big stores. He was mistaken.

Every piece had been carefully chosen. Not luxurious, of course, but
definitely good quality… What might it all have cost Mascouvin?…
Twenty thousand? Perhaps twenty-five.

'Would you like to see the kitchen? I make my own meals, of course. I
have hot water at the sink… For the trash…'

Proudly she opened a sort of panel, revealing a chute.

'It's a quarter to two… I may have to wait for the bus.'

'I'll take you back in a taxi.'

'Drop me somewhere near… I don't want the others to think…'

Mascouvin… Le Cloaguen… Mascouvin… Le Cloaguen… Maigret's mind
wandered incessandy from one to the other of these two… Even when he
tried to think about the man with the pike… Monsieur Biaise was
continually fading into the background. Perhaps because the
superintendent couldn't work up any great interest in him as a human
being.

'Many thanks for the lovely lunch, Superintendent… You're really sure
that Joseph's all right?'

On the terraces of the cafés, people sat digesting their too-copious
meals. Others, off to the races, forced their way onto already full
buses.

With the medical examination at three, it wasn't worth while going back
to the Quai des Orfčvres. To fill in the time, Maigret sauntered up
Boulevard Malesherbes and Rue de Miromesnil. Even so, it was only half
past two when he reached Boulevard des Batignolles. He looked up and
down the street for Janvier.

The inspector hailed him from a little restaurant for chauffeurs and
taxi drivers, where he had just finished eating and was sitting over a
calvados.

'A calva for you, Chief?… It's not bad at all…

Nothing much has happened this morning. The old man came out as usual
about half past eight, and I followed him around, after asking the local
police to keep an eye on the apartment building… He doesn't go fast,
the old man, but he covers the ground all right. We went all the way to
the Bois de Boulogne, coming back via Porte Maillot. He got home at a
few minutes to twelve, without having spoken to a soul…'

'Did the local man report anything?'

'I asked him… Neither of the women left the house. Some meat and
vegetables were delivered. No doubt they ordered by phone… At half
past ten a bicycle messenger from the Palais de Justice…'

'I know.'

'Oh! Then you know everything… I was late getting lunch, because the
place was packed with people from a factory. While I was waiting for a
seat to be free, I strolled over to Place Clichy to telephone
headquarters… What do you think of this calvados?… Honest-to-God
stuff, isn't it?… It's in little places like this that…'

A car stopped in front of the building opposite. Maigret stood up.

'Pay the check, will you?… I'll be seeing you soon.'

'Shall I stay here?'

'Yes.'

A second car drew up. Two gray-haired men got out, and a hefty fellow
who was no doubt a hospital attendant. He carried a large bag.

They were joined by the examining magistrate and Dr. Paul, from the
first car. As the superintendent approached, the latter greeted him.

'Hello, Maigret!… I didn't know you were coming… What do you think
of the man? Is he mad or isn't he? You must have an idea… Good
afternoon, professor. Hello, Delvigne… Amnesia perhaps?… Unless he's
pretending…'

Maigret was introduced to the two psychiatrists. It was all very cordial
and good-natured. Nobody could have guessed that these courtly elderly
gentlemen had come to decide whether one of their fellow creatures was
to be left to enjoy his freedom or put under lock and key.

'Shall we go up?… Lead the way, will you, Superintendent?… You've
been here before…'

The stained-glass windows on the staircase threw splashes of color on
their faces as they passed, making them suddenly blood-red, then gold.
Maigret rang. A hurried step inside; then the door opened.

'Go in, gentlemen,' said Maigret, standing aside.

'Come in,' echoed Madame Le Cloaguen.

What was the matter? She was nervous; there was something not quite
natural in her manner as she showed them into the living room.

Turning to Maigret, the only one she knew, she asked: 'Where is he?'

'Who do you mean?… As you know, these gentlemen have come to examine
your husband and report on his state of mind… I know you got the
notice, which the magistrate here sent around this morning.'

'Was that it?'

'Really, madame! A man came at half past ten this morning from the
Palais de Justice and delivered a…'

'An envelope, yes. But it was addressed to my husband.'

'Do you mean to say you didn't open it? You have no idea what it
contained?'

'I'm not in the habit of opening other people's letters. I left it in
the hall. I'll show you… There, on that table…'

She opened the door and pointed to an old table. On the floor underneath
lay the yellow envelope of the Public Prosecutor's Office. It was empty.

'What happened?'

'I don't know… My husband came in as usual for lunch…'

'Did he read the letter?'

'He must have, since neither I nor my daughter opened it, and there's no
one else here… Our maid's on vacation, you see…'

'Did he have lunch with you?'

'Yes. You can see for yourself.'

She opened another door. The dining-room table was laid for three. Fruit
and cheese were still on it.

'You see… After lunch, Octave disappeared, and I thought he'd gone to
have a nap in his room. He spends a lot of time in his room, you know.
He has a very retiring disposition…'

She was not afraid of irony! She was talking about a man who was
constantly kept out of the way and even locked in his room like a
naughty schoolboy.

'Is he there now?'

'No. I looked in to see, just before you came. Then I noticed that his
overcoat was gone from the hall. I thought he'd gone out again.'

'What time was it when you last saw him?'

'We got up from the table at a quarter to one… We always have lunch at
the same time… But would you tell me what these gentlemen…'

Maigret gave the examining magistrate a rueful smile. As for Madame Le
Cloaguen, she had recovered her confidence.

'What surprises me is that you should ask me these questions. You ought
to know better than I where he is, since our building is under
observation from morning till night, and from night till morning.'

The superintendent went to the window and, peering at the sidewalk
opposite, saw Janvier, who was picking his teeth while he watched the
building.

The two psychiatrists were rather put out. Since there was nobody for
them to examine, they suggested they might as well return to their other
work.

The examining magistrate looked crestfallen.

'Are you quite sure,' he asked, 'that he's nowhere in the apartment?'

And she, haughty as usual, replied: 'Why don't you search the place
while you're here? I don't know what you're waiting for.'

A quarter of an hour later, they had found nothing. Octave Le Cloaguen,
his overcoat and hat, had vanished.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Seven
-------------
« ^ »

No, Monsieur Magistrate, Maigret is not trying to rub it in! He isn't
angry and he isn't sulking. The simple truth is that he's worried.
There's a weight on his shoulders, all the heavier now that he feels he
is beginning to understand. That's why he keeps so obstinately silent.

Unlike the superintendent, the examining magistrate couldn't keep his
mouth shut for a moment. But then, he wasn't beginning to understand! In
fact, it was just because he felt himself completely wrong that he was
so talkative.

Maigret no longer saw the assurance of that morning, the
self-satisfaction with which the magistrate had announced the measures
he had taken.

But one must not confuse the police with choirboys…

'Look here, Maigret… Only a madman would choose to live in a room like
this… It stands to reason…'

Why should the old ship's doctor be mad? In his thirty-odd years with
the police, Maigret had seen so many others who were madder; he'd
sniffed the odor of human passions, of vices, of crimes, of mania, but
here…?

'It's not as if he was poor. He has a comfortable apartment, if not
luxurious. And he stows himself away in a room little better than a
kennel!'

No response from Maigret.

The psychiatrists had left, after handshakes all around, leaving the
examining magistrate to cope, which he did by fussing and expostulating.
Madame Le Cloaguen and her daughter sat waiting in the living room,
trying to guess, no doubt, what question they would be asked next.

The magistrate sent for Inspector Janvier, who was on watch below.

'Look here, my friend, are you sure you never lost sight of the entrance
for a moment?'

'Only for ten or fifteen minutes, soon after the old man went in. I had
to telephone the PJ to make my report.'

'Well, you shouldn't have… If you have to telephone, you must manage
as best you can--I'm not concerned with that. But when you're told to
watch a building, you must watch it, never take your eyes off it.'

Maigret didn't even smile. All that was of no importance.

'I suppose you've had the curiosity to ask whether the house has any
other exit?'

'There isn't one, Monsieur Magistrate.'

'I have no doubt in my own mind, Maigret, that Le Cloaguen slipped out
while your man's back was turned. Still, in a case as serious as this,
we have no right to rule out other possibilities. You'd better send your
inspector to find out whether Le Cloaguen is hiding in any of the other
apartments… Remember, you have no search warrant. I can't give you one
now. Just ask if they'll let you have a look around.'

Maigret said nothing. He simply stood there with his hands in his
pockets staring at the floor. He had even let his pipe go out.

Waiting for Janvier, the magistrate began to lose his composure. When
the inspector returned, it was to say there was no sign of the missing
man.

'He has got to be found! He has got to be found!… Just think, Maigret.
There's a madman at large in the streets of Paris, a homicidal maniac,
who has already committed a murder…'

He called to Madame Le Cloaguen.

'Tell me, madame, has your husband any money with him?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?'

'Quite.'

'You hear that, Maigret? He has no money on him! But he must eat. He
must sleep somewhere. You see what I'm driving at? How is he going to
get hold of some money? You follow my thought?… Can you give me a
photograph of your husband, madame?'

Still Maigret said nothing, and the room seemed to be filled with his
silence. The examining magistrate was ready to clutch at any straw. The
photograph would be as good as any. It would be reproduced and
circulated to the police all over the country. It would be published in
the papers and seen by millions of readers…

'I don't know of any photographs of my husband.'

'Come! It doesn't need to be a studio portrait. It doesn't need to be a
recent one… You must have something. A passport photograph?…'

'My husband hasn't been out of the country for the last thirty years.
Before that, he must have had a passport, but I've never seen it. If you
didn't find it in his room, I think it must not exist.'

The magistrate looked at Maigret, but he probably didn't even notice
that the latter's eyes had lit up for a second. Certainly he didn't
understand the meaning. If he had, he'd have stopped buzzing around.

'Maigret, would you call Missing Persons right away and give them a
description of Octave Le Cloaguen? Tell them to…'

Yes, of course. Maigret would do everything that was wanted.
Mechanically. He was on the track of the truth, which lay, not in the
streets of Paris or at the frontiers, but much nearer home.

He walked over to the telephone, which was attached to the wall in the
hall. As he did so, he could feel Madame Le Cloaguen's gaze fixed on
him, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Gisčle sitting there,
and he recalled…

He recalled the old man's hands in the taxi when he had brought him back
to Boulevard des Batignolles, those hands that trembled, the beads of
sweat on the forehead…

He could remember the exact moment when he noticed those symptoms. There
had been no sign of them at the Police Judiciaire. None whatever. They
had appeared only as the old man drew near his own home.

He hadn't shown any sign of fear in the apartment on Rue Caulaincourt in
spite of the blood and the presence of a corpse.

And yesterday he had seemed positively relieved at the prospect of being
arrested.

'Hello!… Missing Persons?… Is that you, Maniu?… Here's a
description for you. Will you take it down and circulate it?… Yes, as
widely as possible… The man must be handled carefully… Yes. The
examining magistrate is most particular about that. He's to be posted as
extremely dangerous…'

At the other end of the line Maniu chuckled; he knew exactly what
Maigret thought of examining magistrates when they intervened in
criminal investigations.

'Has he slipped through your fingers?'

'Apparently …'

The woman was standing just behind him. When he hung up, he turned
around and looked straight into her eyes with such intensity that she
couldn't repress a nervous twitch.

'I shudder to think,' said the examining magistrate as they left the
building, 'yes, I positively shudder to think of that man's being at
large--armed, in all probability, and ready for anything, to save his
skin. You must admit, Maigret, it was most unfortunate that your man
thought fit to absent himself like that. Just to telephone a mere formal
report… We had the murderer in our hands!… There's no use telling me
he didn't do it. The man who runs away is always guilty… And now…
are you going back to the Quai des Orfčvres?'

'I don't know.'

'What are you going to do next?'

'I don't know yet.'

'It's stopped you, hasn't it?'

What was the use of undeceiving him? Once again, Maigret said nothing.
Nor did he say anything when Janvier, subdued and penitent, joined him
on the sidewalk. It was not until they were drinking a beer on the
terrace of the little restaurant across the street that he murmured:
'Don't worry about it, old fellow.'

'Still, if he makes a big noise…'

'He's made all the noise he's going to.'

'Have you got an idea?'

No answer. Maigret filled his pipe in silence, lit it, then gazed at the
dead match he was holding.

'I wonder if I have time,' he said at last, with a sigh, stretching out
his legs like a man who's very tired.

'Time for what, Chief?'

'To go to Saint-Raphaël.'

'Can't you send somebody?'

No, that was just what he couldn't do. You can give an inspector a
specific job, but you can't send him to the other end of the country
just to have a look, to sniff around like a dog at a garbage can, to
discover the bone, or whatever it might be, the secret they were looking
for…

Suddenly Maigret came to life. A curtain had moved in one of the windows
opposite. A woman's eyes were trained on the superintendent. They were
full of terror.

The next moment the face was gone. Maigret had seen it, however, and its
effect on him was galvanic. He jumped to his feet.

'Come on. Let's get to work… First of all, I want you to go up and
stand outside the Le Cloaguens' apartment. Never mind if they see you.'

'If the old girl comes out?… Just stay there?'

'Let her go. Don't move on any account!'

He watched Janvier cross the street, then went into the restaurant.

'Have you got a telephone?'

It was in the restaurant itself and not closed off. But Maigret did not
care who heard him.

'Is that you, Lucas?… What did you say?… No. It's not important. If
it pleases the Prosecutor's Office… Now, look… Jump in a taxi and
join me here… Yes, Boulevard des Batignolles. The little restaurant
opposite. I'll be waiting for you.'

The landlord looked at him with curiosity, wondering what had brought
the police to the neighborhood, for of course he had understood.

'Mademoiselle, give me Saint-Raphaël, please. I don't know the number.
They'll have to look it up down there. I want to speak to Maître
Larignan. He's a lawyer, but that's all I know about him… Police
priority…'

It was obviously going to be a beer day. There were four empty bottles
on his table by the time he got through to Saint-Raphaël.

'Hello!… No. This is the maid… No, monsieur… Yes, monsieur… No,
monsieur… Monsieur's out… What?…Yes, he's out. He must be on the
jetty, painting… Who's speaking?… Oh! the police!… Yes, monsieur,
I'll go at once…'

Maigret could imagine her rushing out of a clean white villa into the
fierce sunlight of the Côte d'Azur, where the blue sea was dotted with
sails, to find the amateur painter who had set up his easel on the jetty
and was no doubt surrounded by a little group of curious onlookers.

'What'll you have, Lucas?… Landlord, two beers.'

Lucas had realized at once that it wasn't the moment to ask questions.
They sat at a table saying little, waiting for Maître Larignan to call,
while Janvier sat on the top step of a flight of stairs, feeling very
conspicuous and rather undignified, and jumping to his feet every time
one of the tenants passed. The best part of an hour had elapsed before
the telephone rang.

'Monsieur Larignan?… What's that?… No, monsieur, your wife hasn't
met with an accident. I didn't even know she was in Paris… Oh, she
isn't? In Vichy for her liver?… That's good… Tell me about a client
of yours, Monsieur Le Cloaguen… Octave Le Cloaguen… Yes, that's
it… Now, can you tell me at what date he stopped signing the receipts
for the money you pay him?… I know all about it. There's nothing to be
afraid of… Why am I telephoning from a restaurant if I belong to the
police?… Because I haven't got time to go back to the Quai des
Orfčvres… You're very much on your guard, Monsieur Larignan, but I
assure you it's quite all right… Ah! That's better. About ten years
ago… An accident to his finger… In other words, at the same time the
family left Saint-Raphaël for Paris…?'

Maigret mopped his brow. There was no doubt about it: Maître Larignan
was cautious, precise. The answers had to be dragged out of him word by
word, and that was always difficult over the telephone.

'How was the annuity of two hundred thousand francs paid to him?… I
see. You come to Paris every year and hand the money over. In bills?…
Don't cut me off, mademoiselle. Listen in if it amuses you, but for the
love of God don't cut me off… Are you there, Monsieur Larignan?…
Yes, I got that. You pay him in person… What?… I understand. It was
stipulated in the will… Of course… Yes…Yes.'

The Saint-Raphaël lawyer was one of those people who think you have to
shout into the telephone for a long-distance call. In a bellowing voice
he explained that it was his duty to make sure each year that Monsieur
Le Cloaguen was still alive.

'So you've seen him every year. How was he?… In bed?… No?… Always
more or less ill, but never in bed… I see… Thinner and thinner… Go
on. Don't be afraid… Yes… Really?… It's strange, certainly… You
found him odd. Not exactly mad, but eccentric?… At his age, of
course… Just one more thing. The villa they occupied? Empty at the
moment?… Rented to an American woman who hasn't come to France for two
or three years? You have the keys?… Well, will you please hand them to
the person I'll be sending?… You needn't worry. I'll have a search
warrant telegraphed from the Public Prosecutor's Office. Thank you very
much, Monsieur Larignan. I'd be glad if you'd stay within easy reach in
case I have to call you again…'

'A beer, landlord!'

Maigret looked much happier when he rejoined Lucas on the terrace. There
was even a hint of a smile.

'Very funny!… You'd never guess what's been going on. One day, when
Monsieur Larignan went to pay the annuity, he saw a grammar book. And
Madame Le Cloaguen seemed to have been giving her husband a lesson. `I'm
glad to see you're studying,' Monsieur Larignan joked. He was startled
to find he'd said the wrong thing.'

'I don't get the point.'

'Wait!… You'll see it before the evening is out… Now I must call our
friend the examining magistrate, who's going to send me to the devil.'

The little restaurant had become a sort of police headquarters. It was
as though Maigret couldn't bear the thought of losing sight of that big
gray building, in one of whose windows a curtain quivered from time to
time.

'Hello!… I'm sorry to bother you, Magistrate… No. Nothing of any
importance… But I'd like you to telegraph an order to
Saint-Raphaël…'

Maigret gave Maître Larignan's address and that of the villa that was to
be searched.

'They must take a mason with them and one or two bricklayers…
Dangerous?… Yes. I know. The owner will make a row when he finds
out… Never mind. I assure you it's necessary… Yes, the whole place.
The cellars, the garden, the well, if there is one--everything,
absolutely everything… I'd like them to report the result to me
here… Thank you, Magistrate.'

Was it the fifth or sixth glass of beer? Little by little Maigret had
become another man. Not that it was the effect of the beer. He was going
into action, so to speak, and all his faculties were mobilized. He
seemed to be driving steadily forward with calm relentlessness.

'Anything I can do, Chief?' asked Lucas.

'See if you can get an evening paper.'

There it was already--the description of Octave Le Cloaguen:

A dangerous madman who is believed to have murdered the fortuneteller of
Rue Caulaincourt is at this moment loose on the streets of the capital.

Maigret shrugged his shoulders. If that's what the examining magistrate
wanted, he could have it! Anyhow, it served to amuse the public and keep
the reporters happy.

'Do you think he's run away?'

'No.'

'In that case…?'

'Well… perhaps he has, perhaps he hasn't.'

'And the two women?'

'Never mind them. Let's go… Landlord, how much is all this? If any
call comes for me, either from Saint-Raphaël or the Quai des Orfčvres,
ask them to hold the line and come get me, from the building across the
street.'

Really he'd rather have waited. He had the feeling that the whole case
was going to open up quickly. But there was the question of Le Cloaguen.
Where was he? Was he alive or dead? The answer couldn't wait.

They crossed the street, and Maigret knocked on the concierge's door.

'Good afternoon, madame. Yes, it's me again… Tell me, does each tenant
have a locked area in the cellar?… Would you mind taking us down
there?… A flashlight? Yes. Thanks. You might as well bring one…'

They went down one behind the other. The huge vaulted cellar was divided
into cubicles, with partitions made of rough unplaned boards, and in
them were heaps of coal, old boxes, and so on. They came to the Le
Cloaguens' cubicle.

'No, you needn't bother the ladies. It's a very simple lock; we can deal
with it in no time.'

It was indeed only a matter of seconds before the door was opened.
Inside were some empty bags that had contained potatoes, a pile of
recently delivered logs, the remains of last winter's coal.

'Have you a shovel, madame?'

'You'll get dirty.'

Never mind if he did! He patiently shoveled the coal aside until it was
quite clear there was nothing beneath. Then, with the same patience, he
checked the cubicles of the other tenants.

'What about the maids' rooms? I suppose the Le Cloaguens have one or
two, judging by the size of their apartment.'

'On the seventh floor. Yes, they have two.'

'May we see them?'

'If you'll just wait while I go turn my gas down. Otherwise my ragout
will be burned.'

Janvier got to his feet to let them pass and mournfully watched them
climb to the floor above.

'We were going to have an elevator put in, but it wasn't possible
because the stairwell is too narrow.'

After the last flight of stairs, the scene changed abruptly. With no
attempt to maintain appearances there was a long, badly lighted corridor
with numbered doors on either side.

'Here we are: 13 and 14… Last year they tried to rent one, but they
asked for so much that nobody would look at it… I have a passkey.'

Lucas, who had followed the other two, was beginning to feel uneasy. In
Number 13 there was such a musty smell that it caught them by the
throat. It contained a child's crib, a couple of broken chairs, and a
box with a miscellaneous assortment of books.

'You see, they only use it to store a few things that might just as well
be thrown away.'

Number 14 was much the same. A globe, a dressmaker's dummy, and more
books, mostly medical, and some fly-blown anatomical charts.

'You see… they're both empty…'

'Yes. They're empty,' said Maigret like an echo.

Yet he seemed unable to tear himself away from that corridor that led
nowhere.

'One more question, madame… Why is there a ladder at the top of the
stairs?'

'Oh, that thing! I'd like to be rid of it, since it's never used. But,
you see, there's a sort of attic over the last three rooms. To get to it
you need a ladder.'

'Is there anything up there?'

'Well, certain tenants are allowed to store big trunks there, but, to
tell the truth, I've never been up to see.'

A glance at Lucas, who went obediently to get the ladder.

'Shall I go up, Chief?'

'No.'

Maigret was going up himself, and Lucas couldn't help feeling
uncomfortable.

'You'd better take this with you, Chief.'

Lucas held out his revolver, which the superintendent accepted with a
shrug of the shoulders.

The ladder bent under Maigret's weight so much that he changed his mind
and came down again.

'He can't be dead,' he murmured.

'Why not?'

'Because I defy a couple of women to hoist a body up that ladder.'

He raised his head, as one might to call a boy down from a tree.

'Le Cloaguen!' he called. 'Le Cloaguen!'

Silence. The concierge was so affected that she put her hand to her
heart, as though to be ready for more surprises.

'Listen, old fellow, I hate ladders, and this one isn't fit to bear my
weight. You might as well save me the trouble…'

Silence.

'Very well, then! I'm to come up?'

A faint sound. Someone moved up there. Someone bumped against a hollow
object, no doubt an empty trunk. Then a leg came in sight. A foot
hovered in the air feeling for a rung of the ladder. Finally a man in a
greenish overcoat came down, step by step.

No one could have imagined the triumphant joy Maigret felt at that
moment. Yes, one man, Lucas, who knew his chief well, and could have
sworn there were tears in his eyes.

As a rule, Maigret took his successes calmly, but this time he couldn't
help being pleased. He had worked things out by himself, with nothing to
guide him but the most fragmentary clues, his own intuition, and his
capacity for putting himself in other people's shoes.

'You're lucky, Le Cloaguen!'

The old man showed no fear now. He stood there passively, like a man who
has done his best and is now resigned to whatever may be in store for
him. His only reaction was a faint sigh, which might easily have been a
sigh of relief.

'If we hadn't come, I think you might have died of hunger…'

The old man didn't seem to understand, but, after hesitating, he asked:
'Have you arrested them?'

He was covered with dust and cobwebs. The space above was not high
enough for a man to stand.

'Have you arrested them?' What that question meant was: My wife and
daughter were going to bring me food. If not, it could only mean they
were no longer there.

Lucas was still gazing at his chief in admiration.

'No,' said Maigret. 'I haven't arrested them. Not yet.'

Le Cloaguen looked at him with surprise.

'Never mind! You'll see in a moment. Come along.'

They all went down the stairs. Once again Janvier jumped to his feet.
Maigret pointed to him.

'You see this man, Le Cloaguen?… With him here, they'd never have
dared bring you any food… It was why I was obliged to act today, why I
couldn't wait.'

They could hear creeping footsteps on the other side of the front door.
Maigret rang.

'You can go now, madame,' he said to the concierge. 'Many thanks for
your help.'

The door opened a few inches. A pointed nose. A foxy face. The sharp
eyes of Madame Le Cloaguen. A cry.

'Oh! So you've found him!… Where was he?'

'Come in, Lucas. Come in, Janvier. You too, old man.'

Le Cloaguen started at Maigret's familiar tone. The superintendent had
never spoken to him like that before. It seemed to please him, to
reassure him.

'We're not going to do anything to you. We're not going to make you
recite the rules for past participles!'

This time it was the woman who started. She turned on Maigret as if
she'd been stung.

'What do you mean by that?'

'Just what I said, madame… Lucas, don't let this woman out of your
sight. Janvier, go and get the daughter. Same thing with her.'

He turned to Le Cloaguen.

'We don't need to bother about you, do we? You're not going to give us
any more trouble…'

'Can I take off my overcoat?' he asked.

'Of course.'

Maigret watched the operation with keen interest. It was as though he
expected some extraordinary revelation. It turned out, however, to be
nothing very spectacular. One shoulder of the coat must have been
unusually padded, because without it the old man had one shoulder
noticeably lower than the other.

Lucas and Janvier saw Maigret's eyes twinkle, but they were at a loss
why. The superintendent knocked out his pipe, took his spare one from
his pocket and filled it.

There were six of them in the somberly furnished green-curtained room.
The hum of Paris traffic reached them from below. They stood as still as
waxworks, except for Madame Le Cloaguen, who kept clasping and
unclasping her hands.

There were hurried steps outside, on the stairs, which hesitated at the
door. Maigret walked calmly across the hall and opened it.

'You're wanted on the telephone, Superintendent… Saint-Raphaël.'

The landlord of the little restaurant was disconcerted by the cold
figures staring at him as though dumbfounded.

Before going, Maigret looked back from the door.

'Look here, ladies…'

He paused and stared hard at Madame Le Cloaguen before going on.

'If there's any trouble at all…'

And he cheerfully tapped his revolver pocket.

'I'll be back in a few minutes.'

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Eight
-------------
« ^ »

From the point of view of the public, this was far from being one of
Maigret's most resounding successes. For, after giving it a lot of
publicity, the papers suddenly stopped talking about the fortuneteller
of Rue Caulaincourt. Nor was there any further mention of the homicidal
maniac supposed to be at large. At the Quai des Orfčvres, on the other
hand, it was long remembered, and one remark made in the course of that
evening was so often quoted that it became part of PJ tradition.

At about five, a heavy thunderstorm broke over Paris, after more than
four weeks of heat and drought.

'I don't think I'd ever seen anything like it,' Lucas was never tired of
saying.

They had remained in the room with the green curtains. Lucas and Janvier
on one side, the two women on the other, the old man off to one side.

Maigret had been gone about twenty minutes, and Madame Le Cloaguen was
finding the suspense more and more difficult to bear. Finally she got up
from her chair and went and stood by the window, one hand gripping a
curtain, in the way she had spent much of the day, watching the
inspectors on duty below.

Then the storm came. First of all, a gust of wind that swept the dust of
the street right up to the fourth-floor windows and made the awning of
the little restaurant flap like the sails of a boat. Then the rain,
sheets of it. The taxis driving past made ripples almost like the bow
wave of a boat. In a few seconds, every pedestrian had dived into the
nearest shelter, and the sidewalks were deserted.

The living room grew darker, until the only thing lighted clearly was
Madame Le Cloaguen's face at the window. Lucas was gazing at it,
ruminating on the horrible fate of marrying such a woman, when she
turned around abruptly.

'Where's he going?' she asked angrily, pointing down toward the street.

Maigret had just emerged from the little restaurant and, turning up his
jacket collar, was hurrying toward Place Clichy, presumably in search of
a taxi.

It was then that she made the remark that was to become famous around
the Police Judiciaire.

'I hope he hasn't forgotten us!'

Lucas, who had conscientiously modeled himself on Maigret, calmly filled
his pipe. Then he remembered that the old man chewed tobacco, and handed
him his pouch.

'Can I get something from my room?' whispered the old man, his eyes
shining.

In spite of what Maigret had said, Lucas thought it wiser to accompany
him.

The old man rummaged in a cupboard, finally producing an old sock, from
which he took a pipe with a broken stem.

'They can't stop me now, can they?'

Holding Lucas's pouch in his hand, he walked with childish glee back
into the living room, where he sat down again and began filling his
pipe. He did it very slowly, to prolong the pleasure, before striking a
match from the box the sergeant gave him.

Madame Le Cloaguen looked more venomous than ever, but all she said was:
'I really can't see why there's any need to keep us waiting like
this…'

Yet her troubles were only just starting. The minutes passed. A loose
shutter rattled against the outside wall. The rain beat down
relentlessly, but a few people plucked up their courage and made a dash
through it. The room filled gradually with clouds of tobacco smoke.

Over an hour had gone by when a taxi drew up outside. Three minutes
later, there were steps on the stairs and a ring at the bell. Janvier
opened the door.

'Oh, it's you, Monsieur Magistrate… Come in… No, he's not here… He
went to telephone across the street. The last we saw of him he was
hurrying off toward Place Clichy.'

The examining magistrate, who had brought a tall, thin man with him,
bowed rather awkwardly to the two women. He knew nothing of what had
happened. He had merely received an urgent message from Maigret
requesting him to come to Boulevard des Batignolles, with his clerk.

The living room, dark at the best of times, was now bathed in a twilight
gloom, broken occasionally by a flash of lightning, which made them all
jump. Little was said. They sat there eyeing each other in silence like
people in a doctor's waiting room. The old man puffed blissfully at his
foul pipe, which he kept replenishing with Lucas's tobacco.

Janvier looked at his watch, and from then on that was about the only
thing they could find to do. A little later, it was the examining
magistrate's turn, then his clerk's, then Janvier's again.

Seven o'clock… Half past… And suddenly the silence was broken by the
voice of Octave Le Cloaguen, who turned to Lucas to say rather shyly:
'There's a bottle of port in the sideboard… But she's got the key.
…'

A flash of hatred as Madame Le Cloaguen, without a word, took a key from
her bag and put it on the table.

'A glass of port, madame?'

'No, thank you.'

Her daughter, less able to stand the strain, murmured: 'Just a little,
please. Half a glass…'

At eight o'clock Lucas switched on the light, but it was such a poor one
that the room looked almost as murky as before. He and Janvier were both
hungry, but there seemed little prospect of a meal.

At last the bell rang. This time it was Lucas who answered it. When
Maigret's voice was heard from the landing outside, he was saying in his
most urbane tones: 'Come in, will you, madame?'

A little old lady, dressed very neatly in black, hesitated at the door,
then came forward rather timidly. Her cheeks were fresh, and she was
remarkably well preserved for her age. She held her bag in front of her
with both hands and seemed surprised to find so many people there. Then
her eyes fell on Madame Le Cloaguen.

She didn't hold out her hand, but in a stilted voice that betrayed a
host of old resentments she said: 'Good evening, Antoinette.'

Maigret's clothes were as shiny as a wet umbrella, and he left a trail
of drops on the polished parquet floor. He nodded to the examining
magistrate and his clerk, but made no explanation.

'If this kind gentleman hadn't insisted, I'd never have come. Not
after…'

She broke off, having caught sight of the old man. She opened her mouth
to speak, but no sound came from it. She screwed up her eyes, then
fumbled in her bag and took out a pair of spectacles.

She seemed quite at a loss. It was as though she felt herself the victim
of some practical joke. She looked at Maigret, then at Antoinette Le
Cloaguen, then once more at the old man.

He stared back at her blankly, unable to understand why she was so
interested in him.

'But… but that's not my brother! That's not Octave!… My God! And to
think that I have been wondering all these years why he…'

'Sit down, madame… Magistrate, let me introduce Madame Biron, now a
widow, who was formerly Mademoiselle Catherine Le Cloaguen. It was only
this afternoon that I learned of her existence, from the Saint-Raphaël
police… Do sit down, madame. And don't worry about the canon, for we
won't keep you here long…

'You see, Magistrate, Madame Biron was left in straitened circumstances
when her husband died. He was a good man, who worked at the town hall in
Saint-Denis. Madame Biron is now employed as housekeeper by an old
bedridden canon, whom she was most reluctant to leave even for half an
hour…

'Now tell us about your brother, Octave, Madame Biron.'

The two sisters-in-law looked at each other defiantly, yet when Madame
Biron began to speak, she did so with hesitation and with a quietness
that was perhaps a reflection of the ecclesiastical surroundings in
which she now lived.

'Our parents were not rich. In fact, it was all they could do to make
their son a doctor… He went to sea, as you probably know, and in the
course of his travels had the good fortune to win the gratitude of a
very rich man… With the annuity he was given, he retired, got married,
and settled down in Saint-Raphaël, but even with a family of his own, he
was always generous to us…'

'Excuse me… Do you mean that he regularly gave you money?'

'Regularly, no… My husband would hardly have liked that. But he seized
on every pretext for giving us a present or helping in some way…
Fifteen years ago, when I had a bad attack of bronchitis, he insisted on
my staying in his house, though it wasn't long before I realized I
wasn't wanted!'

A meaning look at Madame Le Cloaguen.

'I think Octave noticed it too, only he didn't like to say anything…
You see… Well, I think he often regretted the time he'd spent away at
sea… He bought a small boat, because he was very fond of fishing, at
sea, all alone. It was the only way for him to get a little peace.'

'Did they live comfortably?'

'Yes, I think so… They always had servants. Two, if I remember
right…'

'In other words they lived as people live who have an income of two
hundred thousand francs a year?'

'I daresay… But I've never had that much money myself, so I really
don't know.'

'Did your brother have good health?'

'Yes. So far as I know. I can't remember his ever being really ill…
What's happened to him?'

Everyone looked at Madame Le Cloaguen, who sat, very tense, with her
lips pursed.

'Would it have been to your sister-in-law's advantage to get rid of
him?'

'You don't mean…? As a matter of fact, I think she had every reason to
keep him alive as long as possible, because the annuity, if I'm not
mistaken, was payable only during his lifetime.'

'Have you anything to tell us, Madame Le Cloaguen?'

She answered merely with a look of such fury that Maigret couldn't help
smiling.

'Very well!' he said. 'Then, Magistrate, I'll have to do the explaining.
But first of all, what have you been drinking?'

'Port… Like a glass?'

Maigret made a face.

'If that's the best you can do.'

Again the old man intervened.

'There's a half-bottle of cognac in her room.'

In her room, of course!

'Well, here's the story… The Le Cloaguens were leading at
Saint-Raphaël the easy, comfortable lives of well-to-do people. I've had
a word, over the phone, with the bank there… Ten years ago, Dr. Le
Cloaguen had a balance of barely fifty thousand francs, and as far as is
known that was the sum total of his savings… And then he suddenly
died… Perhaps sometime his widow will make up her mind to tell us what
he died of… Perhaps a sudden stroke…

'Be that as it may, his wife and daughter found themselves faced with
poverty. And there are people who will go to any lengths to avoid
poverty…

'By chance, they had seen an elderly tramp wandering along the quays in
Cannes, a simple-minded and quite harmless individual, whose resemblance
to Dr. Le Cloaguen was striking--'

The old man smiled benignly, not in the least offended by the
description of himself.

'Late this afternoon, the Saint-Raphaël police, acting under our
instructions, found the remains of the true Octave Le Cloaguen walled up
in a recess in the cellar of the villa where he'd lived.

'There you are!… There's only one more detail. The women had little
difficulty persuading the old tramp to exchange his precarious and even
miserable existence for one of comfort and security under another name.
But there was one serious obstacle. What about the receipts for the
annuity payments? They had to be signed, and the old man couldn't manage
to imitate the dead man's signature. It was all he could do to write his
own name…

'So he had to have an accident to his right forefinger. And that was a
sufficient reason for him not to sign.

'Even though the resemblance between the two men was remarkable, it was
too dangerous to remain on the Côte d'Azur. So they came to Paris.

'There was also the doctor's sister, who was not likely to be fooled.
Steps were taken to offend her so deeply that she would never come near
her brother and his family again.'

'That person,' murmured Madame Biron, 'as much as told me I was a
beggar. I wrote to my brother, but he never answered… Now I
understand…'

'Money!…' Maigret said. 'Money! The whole affair is a question of
money. The sordidness of it! For the sake of money she denied her
husband a decent burial…

'The tramp was a bit slimmer than Dr. Le Cloaguen, so he was condemned
to wear an overcoat both winter and summer. One of his shoulders
drooped, so the coat was padded. He was almost illiterate, so he was
made to study grammar. I'd guess he wasn't very successful, for in the
end they thought it best to say he'd gone weak in the head, owing to a
stroke he'd had years ago in the Far East…'

With a disgusted expression on his face, the superintendent looked
around the room.

'It would be a little less repugnant if they'd made some use of this
money. But no. The second Octave Le Cloaguen might die like the first,
and there was no hope of finding another substitute. So they began, with
absolute avarice, to save every franc they could, living with such
miserly economy that they have in the last ten years saved over a
million and a half… Am I right, Madame Le Cloaguen?…

'As for you, Picard…'

The old man seemed to be touched by the sound of his real name.

'You sold your birthright for a mess of pottage… You have a bed,
admittedly. You have food, since you have to be kept alive. But that's
about all. No smoking, no drinking, because Dr. Le Cloaguen neither
smoked nor drank. Besides, those things cost money!… You are like a
dog on a leash. Your only distraction is to wander through the streets,
a pastime that costs nothing… Every year, when the lawyer comes to see
you, you're said to be ill, and he is merely given a glimpse of you in
your room, which is kept as dark as possible…

'You managed nevertheless to escape the vigilance of your jailers. You
managed nevertheless to keep a secret from them right to the end.'

Picard turned his head away. There were tears in his eyes.

'From a marriage long ago, you had a daughter… You found her again in
Paris, where she was a fortuneteller… Mademoiselle Jeanne of Rue
Caulaincourt.'

In the murky atmosphere of that room, the faces were rather like
paintings in a dingy old museum. Maigret was silent. The examining
magistrate, ill at ease, crossed his legs, uncrossed them again, then
cleared his throat.

'Madame Le Cloaguen,' he asked, 'did you kill Mademoiselle Jeanne?'

'It's not true!'

'Madame Le Cloaguen, did you follow your husband, your supposed husband,
to Rue Caulaincourt, and did you enter Number 67 bis?'

'It's not true,' she repeated.

'Do you admit disposing of your husband's body in the cellar of your
villa at Saint-Raphaël?'

'And if I did?'

'Do you admit fraudulently drawing an annuity to which you were not
entitled?'

'I do not… The money was always paid to this man here, not to me. If
this man handed it over to me, I had every right to take it.'

'My God! My God!' stammered the canon's housekeeper, aghast.

Even the men, who had seen plenty of tough customers in their time,
looked at each other with something like bewilderment when Madame Le
Cloaguen went on.

'You know exactly what I face. So do I. A fine not exceeding fifty
francs and a term of imprisonment not exceeding two months. Article 368
of the Penal Code!'

Yes, she had it all at her fingertips. She was pleased with herself. Her
lips quivered slightly, but it was a quiver of triumph.

'I had no idea that this man had ever been married or had a daughter. I
had no idea he ever visited anyone when he went out for his walks… As
for my husband, I can't see what difference it made to him whether he
lay in a cemetery or a cellar…'

'Shame on you!' burst out Madame Biron, unable to contain herself any
longer. 'Can't you see what a monster you are? Never would I have
believed that any of God's creatures could have said a thing like
that!… When I think of my poor brother… Superintendent, I can't bear
it. I can hardly breathe. Can't we have a window open?'

Indeed, she had turned quite pale, and there were beads of sweat on her
upper lip. Maigret opened a window, and a gust of damp air blew through
the green curtains and swept through the stuffy room.

'And now, Maigret?' asked the examining magistrate. It seemed to him
that the superintendent had lost some of his usual assurance. He smoked
his pipe and paced up and down, finally coming to a halt right in front
of Madame Le Cloaguen, at whom he stared with all the force at his
command. His face was hard as stone.

'You're right, madame… The law of the land is powerless to treat you
as you deserve… Yet, in the whole course of my career, I don't think
I've ever seen any human being sink quite so low for the sake of money.
I think I would have more respect for you if you'd killed your husband
in a fit of passion…'

A little cry from Madame Biron.

'I'm sorry, madame, but I simply had to speak my mind… The examining
magistrate asked you just now, Madame Le Cloaguen, whether you killed
Mademoiselle Jeanne. You say you didn't, and I believe you. But I know
very well that if you cared to speak, you could in a moment put us on
the track of the person who did. Am I wrong?'

She studied him from head to foot. For a second she hesitated. Then the
expression on her face grew even harder, if that was possible.

'No!' she said.

'In that case…'

'I shall tell you nothing. Do you hear?'

Suddenly she was transformed. She lost her self-control. Now she was a
fury.

'Never!' she screamed. 'Never! I won't tell you a thing. I hate all of
you, and most of all this hulking bully, Superintendent Maigret. I hated
him from the moment he set his clumsy feet in this apartment… I hate
you! I hate you!… You'll get nothing out of me. You'll never find out
the truth… I'll pay my fifty francs… I'll serve my two months…
That's all!…'

'To whom did you pay two hundred thousand francs recently?'

'I will not tell you.'

Then she changed her mind. Too late, however.

'What two hundred thousand francs?'

'The francs you drew out of the bank last Saturday.'

No answer.

'Where did you go last Sunday between ten in the morning and four in the
afternoon?'

She gave him a sneering look. Maigret felt sure her boast had not been a
vain one. She was capable of holding out, and not even the most grueling
interrogation would drag from her what she wished to keep back.

'Monsieur Magistrate, may I ask you to give me a warrant for the arrest
of this woman and her daughter?'

'My daughter? What has she got to do with it?… Monsieur Magistrate,
you know you have no right to do that… I did not kill that woman, and
the superintendent admits I did not… And when I secretly buried my
husband's body--and that's the only thing you've got against me--my
daughter was not yet of age. She was a child, I tell you, and you have
no right…'

It was already a melodrama and looked now as though it would degenerate
into a farce. She was obviously the sort of woman who would defend
herself with tooth and claw. Literally!

'I did not kill that woman. I never even knew of her existence.'

'Who did it then?'

'I don't know… I won't say another word. I hate you all. And you! You
are a brute!'

The brute was, of course, Maigret, who turned away and poured himself
another glass of port and mopped his brow. The examining magistrate was
still looking at him with questioning eyes. He had thought for a moment
the whole case was in the bag. Now he realized it was as delicate a
problem as ever.

'Lucas, take the old woman away.'

Maigret said that on purpose, and earned another devastating look.

'Janvier, take care of the daughter… Look out!'

Madame Le Cloaguen had made a dash for the open window, but it was not,
as the superintendent supposed, to throw herself out. She had lost all
sense of proportion and leaned over the window sill screaming for help,
as though there were burglars in the house, regardless of the fact that
there wasn't a soul to hear her on Boulevard des Batignolles, which was
still more like a river than a street.

'Handcuffs, Lucas… Janvier, shut the window.'

A laugh, an uncanny, nervous laugh from the old tramp. It was too much
for him, the sight of the woman who had browbeaten him for ten long
years fighting furiously with the little sergeant. She was hitting out
wildly, scratching, and kicking his shins. It couldn't last long, and
soon she stood there, still panting, looking down at her handcuffed
wrists.

The old man went off into another peal of strange laughter.

'Let me call my lawyer. I insist,' Madame Le Cloaguen said. 'You have no
right… Nobody has the right…'

The juiciest part of the comedy was still to come, however. It came with
a ring of the bell. Maigret opened the door.

'Excuse me… Is my friend…?'

A middle-aged fussily dressed woman, followed by a tall, shy young
man… She glanced with surprise at the many strangers in the room. Then
her eyes fell on Madame Le Cloaguen, and she started toward her, a
delighted smile on her face.

'Antoinette!… How are you, my dear?… Would you believe it, this
dreadful thunderstorm…'

She stopped dead. She had held out both her hands, but those they were
intending to grasp … It wasn't possible!

… Handcuffs!

'But…'

She understood. These men must be policemen. And to think that she, a
Cascurant de Nemours, had almost married her son to a…

'Come, Germain! This is no place for us…'

Her astonishment had changed to anger. The whole thing was a trap…
Thank heavens there were no reporters or photographers!… If their name
got into the papers…

'Disgraceful!' she muttered, and, dragging her son behind her, she ran
down the stairs as fast as she could.

With his forefinger Maigret pressed down the tobacco in his pipe. One
last look around, then a nod to Lucas and Janvier.

'Take them away.'

The canon's housekeeper was afraid she'd be forgotten, but Maigret
reassured her. No, he hadn't forgotten.

'As for you, madame, I'm going to take you home in a taxi, if you'll let
me.'

He couldn't have spoken more gently if she'd been his own mother.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Nine
------------
« ^ »

The strange mixture of elements in Maigret's make-up came out strongly
at moments like this. While his physical being reveled luxuriously in
the delights of good food, his mind, detached from his surroundings,
worked at a feverish pace.

In spite of the storm, it was a hot night, and the windows of the big
brasserie on Boulevard Clichy were wide open. The two men were sitting
at a table right in front, next to the terrace. On one side of them were
the bright lights and the warm hum and bustle of waiters coming and
going and diners chatting; on the other, deserted tables under the
dripping awning, except for one, at which two prostitutes sat with empty
glasses in front of them. Beyond that, the glistening sidewalk and the
rain, which, though still persistent, was no longer the downpour they
had seen earlier. On the other side of Place Blanche, with its neon
lights reflected in the wet street, the illuminated sails of the Moulin
Rouge turned unceasingly.

Gusts of damp air with a hint of autumn blew on their faces. The two men
had finished their onion soup with grated cheese, and the waiter brought
two plates heaped with choucroute garnie and two more glasses of beer.
Snatches of music came to them from somewhere or other. As for the old
tramp, his whole attention was focused on every mouthful, the aroma, the
taste; he was enjoying each second of this memorable evening. From time
to time, he raised his head to glance a little apologetically at the
superintendent, as though to excuse himself.

It was midnight. Earlier, when Lucas was bundling the two women into the
taxi, Maigret had held him by the sleeve.

'Where are you taking them?'

'To prison, as you said, Chief.'

'No. Take them to our place and keep them till I get back. Janvier had
better stay with you.'

So the mother and daughter hadn't yet had to rub shoulders with the
women brought in hourly by the vanload as raids against prostitutes were
made in various districts. They now sat rigidly waiting in an empty
office at the Quai des Orfčvres, and they carefully avoided uttering the
least word for fear of giving something away. Only Antoinette Le
Cloaguen's lips moved, like those of the old women in black you see
kneeling by the pillars in a church, as she prepared the story she was
going to tell her lawyer.

The little old lady, Madame Biron, had been taken back to her canon. On
the way, she had turned to the superintendent in the taxi to say: 'Is it
possible that one of God's creatures could bring herself to do such
things?'

That had left only the old man, whom Maigret had taken under his wing
and was plying with soup and choucroute garnie till he was in seventh
heaven.

'Did she starve you?'

'It was what you said--just enough to keep me alive. And in my room. Why
I didn't die of hunger… The daughter wasn't nearly so bad. Sometimes
she gave me something when her mother wasn't looking…'

'Why didn't you walk out on them?'

The look the poor man gave Maigret answered the question before he
spoke. It was the look of a man who has been kicked around all his life
and has never had the strength to stand up for himself.

'You don't know her… She's terrible. Sometimes I thought she was going
to beat me… Over and over again she said that if I ever told, she'd
kill me… You should have seen her when we were burying the corpse in
Saint-Raphaël. She made me do it… She helped me though--with her own
hands, she did--working like a man. When we lugged the body down the
stairs, she didn't turn a hair. It might have been a sack of potatoes
for all she cared…'

'Who killed your daughter, Picard?'

Maigret had let the old man finish his choucroute before asking the
question. When he did, he spoke in a matter-of-fact, almost casual
voice, while he gazed across the street at the flickering movements of
the windmill.

'I can tell you one thing, Superintendent. It wasn't her. I swear it
wasn't… I don't know who did it… If I did…'

His voice trailed off sadly. It was a shame to spoil this wonderful
night by bringing up that again.

'Once, Marie told me… She was always Marie to me. Jeanne--that was
only for the customers… Once, she told me I shouldn't come see her
just any time, but should drop her a line to say when I was coming…
But I went just the same… I always waited outside for a while before
going up, in case a customer came… That day I didn't see anybody, and
when I went up I found her alone.'

The old man brought out his broken old pipe, foraged from God knew
where. Maigret hesitated a moment; then without a word handed him one of
his own, since he always carried two pipes in his pocket. The other
filled it. Women at a neighboring table were laughing loudly. On the
sidewalk outside, a man kept passing and repassing, trying in the dim
light to make out which of the two prostitutes was the more desirable.

'She was worried… She said she was in some sort of trouble. She
wouldn't say what it was except that it had something to do with me and
that it might turn out badly… A car stopped outside, and she jumped up
and looked down from the balcony… It was then that she shoved me into
the kitchen. I didn't hear her lock the door, but I suppose she must
have…'

'So you didn't see the man who came up?'

'No… I heard someone talking in a low voice.'

'You're sure it was a man?'

'Yes… But I've just thought of another thing Marie said… What was
it?… I easily get mixed up…'

Maigret ordered two glasses of brandy and waited patiently, puffing on
his pipe.

'Oh, yes. I remember now… She said she knew somebody who'd known me in
Cannes, someone who came up to Paris every week and had spotted me one
day leaving her place.'

Maigret didn't show by a flicker of a muscle how much that information
might mean to him. He took deep breaths of the cool air, as though it
had the whole flavor of a Paris night, and while his eyes rested almost
lovingly on the familiar things around him, other images rose in his
mind with extraordinary clarity.

These were his great moments, and they more than compensated him for all
the office work, the petty details, which made so many cases so boring.

Picard, the old tramp, roaming the streets and quays of Cannes…

'Tell me, Picard, how did you come to that?'

'I don't know… except that nothing I did ever went right… I was a
packer in a shoe factory at Caen… But my wife ran away--I never knew
who with or where she went… And then I got a job here and a job there.
And whenever I felt like it, I took the train--it didn't matter where…
Then one day I stopped traveling… It was in Cannes… When that
woman…'

The old man's face changed. Obviously he would never shake off the
feeling of terror she had instilled in him.

'I was getting old, you see… tired… And the thought of a bed and
regular meals…'

The naďve look came back into his eyes as he asked: 'Do you think she
really would have killed me?'

'I don't know, Picard, but I wouldn't put it past her.'

Maigret mused… Sidelights on poverty… An old man who's had enough of
it sells himself into slavery for a little security. A woman who has
never known it is so afraid of it that she sacrifices all that makes
life worth living. Rather than face it, she would go to any lengths…

Yes. To any lengths!…

'Well, it's time we went. Waiter! The check, please!'

All around them were people who were living their own lives. Maigret was
living half a dozen lives at once. He was in Cannes, in Saint-Raphaël,
in Morsang-sur-Seine, on Boulevard des Batignolles, Rue Caulaincourt,
Place des Vosges…

They were all around him, in the rain.

The old man asked artlessly: 'Where are we going?'

'Look here, Picard… would you mind, for just one night, sleeping in
the jail?'

'Are they there?'

'No. Not yet. In any case, you wouldn't see them… I'll get you out in
the morning.'

'All right… if you want…'

'Taxi!… To the Dépôt.'

The dark quays. The red light over the entrance to the Dépôt.

'Good night, old fellow… I'll see you tomorrow… Guard, take good
care of this man, will you?'

The guard would have been surprised to learn that his charge had shortly
before been having supper with Superintendent Maigret in a brasserie on
Boulevard Clichy.

Only two windows were lighted up at the Quai des Orfčvres. Maigret could
picture the two women sitting primly, Lucas yawning, and Janvier having
no doubt just sent out for beer and sandwiches.

Should he go up? Maigret didn't want to. Instead, he walked along the
quay, then stopped and leaned over the parapet to stare at the black
river as fine rain cooled his forehead.

Thoughts flitted through his mind… Of course!… The fortuneteller was
expecting her fate, or at any rate something unpleasant… She had
spoken of a man who 'came up to Paris every week,' and that alone gave a
hint of the sort of person they had to deal with…

On that Friday, a car stopped outside… the green sports car…

Maigret, walking on, reached the Pont-Neuf. An empty taxi passed.

'Rue Caulaincourt.'

'What number?'

'I'll tell you when to stop.'

He might have waited until morning. In fact, he should have. What he was
doing was definitely irregular, but it wasn't the first time. After all,
criminals didn't hamper themselves with any qualms about legality!

He didn't feel like going home to bed. He certainly wouldn't be able to
sleep. And he had to do something to fill in the time.

'A little farther up on the left… There, that white shop… Wait for
me, will you?'

The dairy. He had to ring three times, though the bell made such a noise
that he expected it to wake the whole house. Finally, there was a little
click, and the door opened to his touch. Inside, he groped for the
light, then tapped on the door of the concierge's lodge.

'The people who keep the dairy, please…'

'What do you want?… Who are you?'

She finally woke up, opened the door, and thrust out a head covered with
curlers.

'I want the dairy people… What?… Behind the shop?… They have no
bell?… And Emma, the girl who works for them?'

Ah! Emma slept up on the seventh floor, where her employers rented one
of the servants' rooms.

'Thank you madame… You needn't worry. I won't disturb anyone else.'

After the third floor, he couldn't find any switches, so he had to use
matches. On the seventh floor, he found the third door, as he had been
told. He knocked gently and put his ear to the door. Through it he heard
something like a sigh, then the creaking of bedsprings.

He knocked again.

A sleepy voice: 'Who's that?'

He spoke in a loud whisper, for fear of rousing the neighbors.

'Let me in. It's me, the superintendent.'

Bare feet on the floorboards. The light went on. More footsteps.
Finally, a bolt shot back, and the door opened just wide enough to show
the fat girl in her nightgown, her features swollen with sleep, her eyes
frightened.

'What do you want?'

The room smelled of bed, woman, a faint whiff of face powder, and soapy
water.

'What do you want?'

He shut the door behind him. Emma slipped an old coat on over her
nightgown.

'He's been arrested.'

'Who has?'

'The murderer… The man with the green sports car.'

'What?'

She was slow in coming to her senses.

'I tell you he's just been arrested. You've got to come at once to the
Quai des Orfčvres to identify him.'

'My God! My God!'

'Get dressed quickly. Don't be afraid. I'll look the other way.'

He turned his back and heard her fumbling for her underclothes, which he
had seen in a heap on a chair by the bed.

'My God! My God!' she repeated.

She was crying, making little sobs. Fifty times she repeated: 'My God!'
Then: 'How is it possible?'

When he turned around, she was still in her pink underwear and was
pulling on her stockings. But he had seen plenty of women in his time.
As for her, she was too upset to realize she was dressing in front of a
man.

'You'll know him, won't you?'

'I'll have to see him. I'll have to…'

All at once she threw herself on the bed, sobbing loudly, shaking her
head, and protesting.

'I won't!… I won't!… It's my fault that you've caught him…'

What a chance for a photographer, if one had been there! The massive
Maigret in that tiny room, leaning over a fat girl in pink underwear,
tapping her on the shoulder!

'Take it easy, my girl… Finish your dressing… They're waiting…'

She went on shaking her head. She bit the sheet and clutched her pillow
as though she meant to cling to the bed at all costs.

'Steady now, steady! You've made trouble enough as it is… If I hadn't
put in a good word for you, you'd be in prison yourself by now.'

That magic word had an instantaneous effect. She looked up.

'In prison?'

'Yes. And for a long time, too. Don't you realize that by refusing to
recognize his photograph you've made yourself an accessory?'

She bit her underlip until it bled. An obstinate look came over her
face.

'Why?'

'Because… because I liked him.'

'Well, you've wasted a lot of our time, and he might have slipped
through our fingers… We might even have arrested an innocent man…
Get dressed. Otherwise I'll be forced to call the policeman who's
downstairs.'

They were a strange couple creeping down the stairs in the dark. The
taxi was waiting.

'Get in.'

On the way, Emma's voice returned.

'Why did he kill her?… She was his mistress, wasn't she?… Other men
used to go there. I suppose he was jealous…'

'Maybe.'

'I'm sure that was it. He loved her.'

He led her up the stairs of the PJ and down the long corridor, where
only one lamp was kept on during the night. Janvier, hearing steps,
peered out of one of the rooms and was astonished to see his chief with
the dairymaid.

'What are they doing?' asked the superintendent.

'The girl is asleep. The other one is waiting.'

Maigret took Emma into his office and shut the door.

'Where is he?'

'They're getting him now. He won't be long. Sit down.' Poor child--so
pink and fresh usually, now pale as a ghost.

'Here are the photographs we showed you…'

He picked them up, as though casually, and handed them to her, one by
one, reading the names as he did so.

'Justin-le-Tatoue… Bébert from Montpellier… La Caille…'

She gazed at them petrified, waiting for the one she dreaded.
Everything, for Maigret, depended on this moment. He didn't dare look at
her face, for fear of warning her. It was her hands he looked at, fat
hands with broken nails. One lay on the desk, while the other hung in
midair, over the photographs.

'Little Louis from Belleville… Justin…'

He held his breath for a moment, then suddenly relaxed. It was all over.
The finger muscles of both her hands had contracted spasmodically.

'That's him, isn't it?… Justin. Justin from Toulon…'

She shivered. The expression on her face changed, and she looked up at
him blankly.

'Didn't you know?'

The next moment she realized what she'd done. She half rose from the
chair. For a second it looked as if she was going to throw herself on
the superintendent.

'It isn't true! You haven't arrested him… It was merely a trick to get
me to give him away!… And I've… I've done it!… I…'

'Gently! Gently!… And let me tell you that your precious Justin is a
vicious fellow…'

'It was I… I…'

'Come on! You're tired. And you have to get up early.

… We'll take you home.'

He rang.

'Here, Janvier! Take this girl home… Be kind to her, because she's
upset. In fact, if you've got a drop of something to make her feel
better…'

Still, she was not really to be pitied. She'd had a lucky escape. If
Justin had taken an interest in her, it might have been a very different
story!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter Ten
-----------
« ^

Hello!… Police Judiciaire?… Madame Maigret. Has my husband gone away
somewhere?'

'No, my dear, he's here all right!'

'Oh, it's you! Aren't you coming home?'

'Perhaps… It all depends…'

Madame Maigret had waked up at four o'clock and had been concerned at
finding herself alone in bed.

'No, I'm not going away… Not far, anyway… Go back to bed and don't
worry.'

Alone in his office, he made a whole series of telephone calls, which
made him feel rather like the conductor of an orchestra.

'No, Superintendent, Mascouvin can't be questioned yet. Not for another
three or four days.'

The Criminal Police in Toulon. Then the Criminal Police in Nice.

'Justin, yes… We'll do our best… I understand. Glad to help.'

Obviously Justin wasn't liked down there!

Through the nearest police station to Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette he got
hold of Torrence, who was covering Monsieur Biaise, and told him to
bring the latter to the PJ later that morning.

Maigret put on his hat, but before leaving he couldn't resist the
pleasure of looking through the keyhole at Madame Le Cloaguen, who still
sat rigidly upright in her chair. He couldn't see Lucas, but could hear
him snoring.

Day was breaking. The air was full of humidity, and the sidewalks were
strewn with wet leaves, but it was no longer raining.

'Taxi!… Have you got plenty of gasoline? We have a long trip to make.'

At eight o'clock Antoinette Le Cloaguen, her face haggard, but still
preserving her dignity, broke the long silence.

'How much longer does your superintendent intend to keep us here?'

Lucas had gone over to the sink and was washing his hands and face.

'Would you rather go straight to prison?'

Her daughter's hair was tousled, like mesh falling over her face.
Janvier had managed to get a couple of hours' sleep on a couch in the
waiting room. The PJ began to come to life.

At nine, the various superintendents gathered in the room of the 'big
chief' for the daily staff meeting. Only Maigret was missing.

'Which of you knows about this?'

He read out a message that had been phoned in by the Criminal Police in
Nice to the effect that Justin de Toulon had been arrested at seven
o'clock that morning as he was leaving the Casino de la Jetée. The man
had protested vigorously.

'That must be for Maigret.'

'He's not in his office?'

The director went into the next room to inquire, and was astonished to
find the two women, who looked like they'd been there all night. He
greeted them mechanically.

Seeing the older one coming toward him, he beat a hasty retreat.

'Who was that?' she asked as the door closed.

'The big chief,' Lucas answered.

'Really?… You mean the director?… Tell him I want to see him.'

'Impossible! The staff meeting's on.'

A Paris taxi splashed through the mud of a little road between Morsang
and Fontainebleu, or, more exactly, between the Morsang and the
Citanguette locks. It had already stopped at two riverside inns.

'Tell me, have you, by any chance…'

He held out the photographs, one in particular… A shake of the head…
Maigret downed a small glass.

They had been held up at one place by a tree that had been blown down
and was lying right across the road. Fortunately, some road workers had
turned up with a crane and soon hauled it clear.

'Tell me, have you…'

People looked with amazement at this big, unshaven man who smoked pipe
after pipe but seemed tireless.

Finally a man said: 'Yes, of course… Almost every Sunday… Fellow
with a green sports car.'

For the third time, the examining magistrate telephoned Maigret's
office.

'No, Monsieur Magistrate, he's not here yet, but he just called to say
he'd be back in a quarter of an hour… Yes… Monsieur Biaise?… He's
in another room, with Torrence… Says he's going to take it up with the
minister… Yes… Madame Le Cloaguen?… Just the same…

Yes, I had coffee and croissants brought in for them. The mother drank
her coffee but didn't eat anything…'

Everyone was waiting for Maigret. The director was uncomfortable about
the whole thing, because he was receiving protests from all sides.
Mademoiselle Berthe, whom Maigret had summoned by express letter, was
sitting demurely in the waiting room in her little red hat.

They would have been surprised, all of them, including old Picard,
waiting in the Dépôt, had they seen the superintendent at that moment.

He was sprawled across the back seat of the taxi, and at first sight you
might have thought him drunk. His eyes were almost closed. No, not
quite. Open just enough for him to be vaguely conscious of the green
countryside flitting past the window.

Still smoking his eternal pipe, he was lost in a reverie, a reverie that
consisted of a strange game in which human beings were pawns. The game
was to put each pawn in its proper place.

It was all so simple!… And yet so complicated!… If only that silly
fool hadn't started them off on the wrong foot. Yes, he had a grudge
against Mascouvin, who, with his head in bandages, was still lying in a
bed at the Hôtel-Dieu. If it hadn't been for him…

At the same time Maigret couldn't help feeling indulgent toward him.
After all, it was entirely for the sake of that charming little sister
of his…

To understand the case, it was necessary to understand Mascouvin, the
man who was dishonest and conscientious at the same time. He had failed
and was tormented by remorse…

It boiled down to a matter of accounting: credits and debits. On the one
hand, the salary of a clerk at Proud and Drouin; on the other, the cost
of Mademoiselle Berthe's education and furnishing her little apartment,
to say nothing of what he needed to keep himself going.

Obviously, his salary was not sufficient.

Yet Monsieur Drouin had said there was no money for the clerk to steal.

At every bump in the road, Maigret's head wobbled and his pipe nearly
fell out of his mouth. However, he never lost the thread of the
dissertation he was to give presently in his office at the Quai des
Orfčvres, by which time all the pawns had to be in their proper
places…

'Yes, Magistrate, that was the start of everything… Mascouvin was
tempted… By whom? By one of the firm's clients, a man who rarely
bought anything but was interested in everything they had to offer…
Monsieur Biaise, in fact, the most cunning and pitiless of
blackmailers…

'A beautifully organized business! He has accomplices, but is never seen
with them. None of them ever sets foot in his apartment on Rue
Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, where he passes for a model citizen, a
respectable man of private means.

'At Morsang, at the Pretty Pigeon, he's an enthusiastic fisherman. He
fishes in the tall reeds and rushes of the bank, where he's hidden from
view.'

Only that morning, Maigret had forced the admission out of Isidore.

'Yes, I've always done his fishing for him. He goes in for another
sport! Meets a woman up there. A married woman, I suppose, but I don't
know who she is. I've never seen her… Nobody suspects what he's really
after…'

A married woman? Nothing of the kind. Who, then, came to meet him
between the Morsang and Citanguette locks?

Who would the careful Monsieur Biaise need for his business? Someone to
collect money and get tough with those who didn't want to pay.

That was Justin's role. Justin with the green sports car.

What other people did he need? People to supply him with information
that others would pay to have kept quiet.

That's where Mascouvin came in. He and others. He worked in a real
estate office, where, among other things, they dealt with new housing.
Plenty of shady business there! Concessions to be acquired, local
regulations to be by-passed, municipal officials' palms to be greased!

Monsieur Drouin had been quite right. Mascouvin had no access to any of
the firm's money. He could read the firm's letters, however, and copy
compromising paragraphs. Much safer. More lucrative too! Lucrative
enough to buy the pretty Mademoiselle Berthe all she needed.

He had been tempted. And once he was entangled in Monsieur Blaise's web
there was no getting free again. He was caught--an honest man who has
slipped and is condemned to be dishonest for the rest of his life.

It was torture to him. He was tortured too by the indifference of the
countess, with whom he'd fallen in love.

He was anxious, complicated. As Drouin had said, he was a man who was
always conscientious, and who went wrong.

'Why?… I'll tell you, Magistrate…'

Maigret tapped on the glass partition. They were at one of the gates in
Paris. At the Quai des Orfčvres, everyone was waiting for him.

'Stop here, driver… I'm thirsty.'

It was true. Though that wasn't why he was stopping. The thing was he
hadn't yet finished the game. He hadn't yet got his pawns into position.

'What about Mademoiselle Jeanne?' the examining magistrate would ask.

'Another of Blaise's informers… A fortuneteller!…

What better profession for ferreting out people's secrets?… Regularly
every Friday Justin came to collect the week's confidences, which he
would then hand over to Biaise, the fisherman, under cover of the rushes
on the riverbank.

'How did she get involved in this business? Impossible to say. All we
know about her is that her mother wasn't much good, that her father
became a tramp, and that she herself had had a pretty desperate struggle
to keep her head above water… Perhaps, like our friend Emma, she had
fallen for the handsome Justin…

'Then one day Justin stumbled on the Le Cloaguen hoax. He saw the old
man coming away from his daughter's house and no doubt followed him home
to Boulevard des Batignolles.

'A perfect little gold mine! A woman with an ill-gotten income of two
hundred thousand francs a year! She was the ideal victim. Henceforth she
would have to share it. And Biaise would get the lion's share!'

Maigret was sitting near the counter of the little bar, and the driver
began to wonder whether he hadn't fallen asleep. The game was still
going on, however.

'I assure you, Magistrate, that that's what happened. Mademoiselle
Jeanne learned that Justin was going to deal with Madame Le Cloaguen,
and her father was bound to take the recoil. She pleaded. Perhaps she
threatened to give the whole thing away, to denounce them all.

'So, it was decided to kill the fortuneteller!

'It was much too good a deal to be abandoned for sentimental reasons.
Even if, for them, she was a goose that laid golden eggs… And they'd
decided to ask Madame Le Cloaguen for a whole year's annuity… It was
decided on. They'd kill Mademoiselle Jeanne at five o'clock on Friday.'

At the Quai des Orfčvres they were getting more and more impatient. So
was the taxi driver, who had been at work all night and was longing to
get home to bed.

'Another calva, landlord.'

It was decided. The fortuneteller was to be killed. Only, why was
Mascouvin told about it?… Perhaps he had been kicking too. Anyhow, it
would be a good lesson to him. Raise the standard of discipline in the
gang…

What could the wretched Mascouvin do? Could he go to the police and say:
'I belong to a gang of blackmailers, and one of us is going to be killed
at five o'clock tomorrow. She's a fortuneteller, but I don't know her
name or where she lives…'

Hardly. But the conscientious crook had to do something. He turned it
over and over in his mind as he sat in the Café des Sports… An
anonymous letter to the police?… They'd take no notice. He must go
himself.

He had a bright idea. The blotting-paper trick… Disguising his
handwriting, he wrote a note, blotted it. He'd take the blotter to the
police.

Really quite clever… When he finished the note, he caught sight of the
calendar and signed it Picpus.

He'd only have to keep out of Justin's reach for a while. For that, he
invented the story of the thousand francs he'd stolen from Proud and
Drouin. In prison he'd be safe.

A complicated creature, Mascouvin. Too complicated… But then, when
you're conscientious!… And a crook as well!…

When he failed to stop the murder, his one thought was to do away with
himself…

'Hey! Wake up!'

The taxi driver shook Maigret's shoulder. The superintendent really had
gone to sleep this time. He opened his eyes.

'Where shall I take you?'

'Quai des Orfčvres.'

'Eh?'

'Police Judiciaire.'

So profoundly had he slept that it took him the whole way to pull
himself together. He needed all his faculties. True, the game was over,
but the real job lay before him, that of explaining it to the examining
magistrate.

One good thing anyhow had come out of Monsieur Blaise's infamous
activities. They had stopped Madame Le Cloaguen. If it hadn't been for
them, she'd have gone on forever hoarding the annuities and browbeating
her tame tramp.

What a nasty woman!

The PJ… Maigret walked gloomily up the stairs.

'They're all waiting for you, Superintendent.'

'I know… I know…'

It was noon. Not only was everyone waiting for him, but the faces that
were turned on him were full of resentment, especially the face of the
examining magistrate, who felt he'd been treated with scant respect.

The explanation lasted until three o'clock.

'But what can you prove?' sneered Monsieur Biaise at the end.

'Everything… Justin's come clean.'

It was true. A call from Nice earlier had reported that Justin had been
lulled into thinking he might save his neck if he talked, and he had
given away his boss and all the others.

'Aren't you coming home?' asked Madame Maigret over the telephone.

'In--let's see now--in about an hour… What are you having for dinner?'

One last little chore to do. As the examining magistrate had pointed
out, no action could be taken against Madame Le Cloaguen unless the
person she had defrauded agreed to prosecute.

The Argentine gentleman who had provided the annuity was dead.

His daughter, whom Octave Le Cloaguen had saved, had, like many another
South American heiress, married a foreign prince. They lived in Paris.

A liveried manservant ushered Maigret into the sumptuous living room of
a private house near the Etoile. He waited a whole hour. Poor Madame
Maigret! Finally the door opened.

'I'm so sorry, Superintendent… These stupid servants! They forgot to
tell me you were here… What can I do for you?'

The girl who had nearly died of yellow fever was now a woman of fifty.
She still dressed like a debutante, however, and was certainly a much
valued customer of somebody's beauty parlor. She was accompanied by a
young man who looked like her equerry.

'I suppose you know, madame, that many years ago your father settled an
annuity of two hundred thousand francs on a certain Dr. Le Cloaguen…'

'Oh, yes, I know. When I had yellow fever… Can you imagine me with
yellow fever, José?'

'The thing is, Dr. Le Cloaguen died and…'

'Poor man! He can't have been old.'

'He was…'

No, it was better not to discuss people's ages in this house!

'As a matter of fact, he died ten years ago, and his wife, in order not
to lose the income, got another man to impersonate him--a tramp she
picked up in the streets of Cannes who looked like him.'

'How amusing!… José, are you listening?… I haven't heard anything so
funny for ages… Do you mean to say she took him into her house as her
husband?… Tell me, Superintendent, do you think they…?'

'The point is, madame, that you've been defrauded out of a very
considerable sum of money, and I've come to ask you whether you wish to
prosecute.'

'Prosecute?… Why should I?'

'Fraud's a serious matter, madame.'

'Poor woman!… Why didn't she write to me? I'd have arranged it all at
once. To tell the truth, I'd forgotten all about it. It's my lawyer who
sees to matters of that sort… But no, Superintendent… Tell me… I'd
like to meet the woman who… It's too funny! A new husband who's the
same…! Isn't that interesting, José? Do you think she'd come and have
tea with me, Superintendent?'

'Maigret!… Here you are at last!… I was wondering whether you'd ever
come… I've got some fricandeau waiting for you.'

But as he crossed the hall the superintendent began taking off his
jacket and loosening his tie.

'Sleep,' he murmured.

'What?… Do you mean to say you're not going to eat anything?… You?'

He didn't answer, but dived straight into the bedroom. As he undressed,
he muttered to himself.

'What fools… What fools people are!…'

But as he finally laid his head on the pillow, his face relaxed into a
dreamy smile.

If they weren't such fools, there'd be no need of policemen…