Maigret and the Killer

by Georges Simenon

  ‘To taunt you? Out of defiance?’

  ‘No. He needed reassurance.’

  ‘And he turned to you?’

  ‘There was no one else available to him.’

  ‘Are you sure he was the murderer?’

  ‘I said the killer. A murder assumes premeditation.’

  ‘His act wasn’t premeditated?’

  ‘Not exactly, unless I’m mistaken.’

  ‘Why did he write to the papers?’

  ‘Did you read that?’

  ‘Yes. At first, I thought it was a prank. Do you know who he is?’

  ‘No, but I could find out in twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Aren’t you interested in arresting him?’

  ‘He’ll give himself up of his own accord.’

  ‘And what if he doesn’t give himself up? If he commits another crime.’

  ‘I don’t think that …’

  But Maigret was in a state of suspense. Was he right to be so sure of himself? He thought of Antoine Batille, who had dreamed of studying tropical people and who wanted to marry young Mauricette.

  He wasn’t yet twenty-one, and he had been brought down in a deluge in Rue Popincourt, never to get back to his feet.

  He slept badly. Twice he opened his eyes, thinking that he heard the phone ringing.

  ‘He won’t kill again.’

  He tried to reassure himself.

  ‘Basically he’s the one who’s frightened.’

  A real Sunday sun, a sun of childhood memories. Beneath the dew, the garden smelled good, and the house smelled of eggs and ham.

  The day passed uneventfully; still, Maigret’s face seemed to be behind a veil. He couldn’t relax completely, and his wife was aware of it.

  At the inn they were welcomed with open arms and they had to clink glasses with everyone, because they were almost considered as locals.

  ‘A game of cards this afternoon?’

  Why not? They ate local rillettes made locally, coq au vin blanc and, after goat’s cheese, rum babas.

  ‘About four o’clock?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He looked for the most sheltered corner of the garden to set down his wicker armchair and, with the sun warming his eyelids, he soon fell asleep.

  When he woke up, Madame Maigret made him a cup of coffee.

  ‘It was a pleasure to see you sleeping so well.’

  He had something like a taste of the countryside in his mouth, and he thought he could still hear the flies buzzing around him.

  ‘Wasn’t it strange to hear his voice on the telephone?’

  Neither of them could help thinking about it, each in their own way.

  ‘After forty years in the job, I’m still impressed when I encounter a man who has killed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he has crossed the line.’

  He didn’t provide any further information. He knew what he meant. A man who kills cuts himself off in a sense from the human community. In the blink of an eye, he stops being an individual like the rest.

  He wanted to explain himself, to say that. He had the words on the tip of his tongue but he knew that it was no use, no one would understand him.

  Even real killers, professionals. Their manner is aggressive, sarcastic; it’s because they need to show off, to make themselves believe that they still exist as men.

  ‘Will you be getting back very late?’

  ‘I hope to be back before six thirty.’

  He met up with his old friends from the town, sound people for whom he wasn’t the famous Detective Chief Inspector Maigret but a neighbour and also an excellent fisherman. The red mat was spread out in front of them. The cards, which had seen better days, were slightly sticky. The local white wine was cool and fresh.

  ‘Your call.’

  ‘Diamonds.’

  His opponent on the left announced a sequence of three, his partner four queens.

  ‘Trumps.’

  The afternoon was spent playing cards, fanning them out, announcing runs of three or royal pairs. It was like a restful hum. From time to time the landlord came in to take a look at how each of them was playing and left again with a knowing smile.

  Sunday must have seemed like a long day to the man who had killed Antoine Batille. Maigret hoped that he hadn’t stayed at home. Did he have a small apartment, with his own furniture, or did he pay for a room by the month, in a modest hotel?

  It was better for him not to stay within four walls, to go outside and lose himself in the crowd, or perhaps go to the cinema.

  In Rue Popincourt, on Tuesday evening, it was raining so hard that it looked like a cataclysm, and fishing boats had been lost in the Channel and the North Sea.

  Wasn’t that important in its way? And perhaps also in its way Antoine’s jacket, his long hair?

  Maigret tried not to think about it, to concentrate on the game.

  ‘So, inspector, what do you say?’

  ‘I’ll pass.’

  The white wine had gone to his head a little. He wasn’t used to it any more. It went down like cool water, and it was only later that you felt the effects.

  ‘I’ll have to be getting back.’

  ‘We’ll stop at five hundred points, all right?’

  ‘Let’s go for five hundred points.’

  He lost and paid for the rounds.

  ‘It looks as if you’ve been neglecting your game in Paris. A bit rusty, aren’t you?’

  ‘A bit, yes.’

  ‘You’ll have to come for a bit longer at Easter.’

  ‘I hope so. It’s the best I can hope for. There are criminals who …’

  And there it was! All of a sudden, he was thinking about the phone call again.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen.’

  ‘See you next Saturday?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He wasn’t disappointed. He had had the weekend he had decided to have, but he couldn’t hope that his worries and responsibilities wouldn’t follow him to the country.

  ‘At what time do you want to leave?’

  ‘As soon as we’ve had something to eat. What have you got for dinner?’

  ‘Old Bambois came and gave me a tench, and I cooked it in the oven.’

  He went and looked greedily at the swollen skin, a beautiful golden colour.

  They drove slowly, because Madame Maigret was even more anxious by night than by day. Maigret turned on the radio and smiled as he listened to the traffic warnings, then the day’s news.

  It was mostly about foreign politics, and Maigret sighed with relief as he noted that there was nothing about the affair in Rue Popincourt.

  In other words, the murderer had behaved himself. No crime. No suicide. Only the kidnapping of a little girl in Bouches-du-Rhône. They still hoped to find her alive.

  He slept better than the night before, and it was broad daylight when he was woken by a lorry whose exhaust pipe sounded as if it was exploding. His wife was no longer beside him.

  She had probably just got up, because the bed was still warm, and she was busy making coffee in the kitchen.

  Leaning on the banisters, Madame Maigret watched her husband going heavily downstairs, a little as if she was watching a child going off to sit a difficult exam. She knew barely any more than the newspapers, but what the newspapers didn’t know was how much energy he put into trying to understand, how much he concentrated during certain investigations. It was as if he identified with the people he was hunting and suffered the same torments as they did.

  He was lucky enough to find an open-platform bus, and that way he was able to go on smoking his first pipe of the morning.

  No sooner had he arrived in his office than Detective Chief Inspector Grosjean called him on the phone.

  ‘How’s it going, Maigret?’

  ‘Very well. And you? Those shady characters?’

  ‘Contrary to what one might have believed, it was Gouvion, the pathetic lookout, who was most useful to us, and who allowed us to find wi
tnesses for two of the burglaries, at the Château de l’Épine, near Arpajon, and the other in a villa in Dreux Forest.

  ‘Gouvion often spent three or four days on the spot, watching comings and goings. Sometimes he went for lunch or a drink nearby.

  ‘I think he’ll crack soon and spill the beans. His wife, who used to be an actress at Châtelet, is begging him to do it.

  ‘All four of them are at the Santé, in different cells.

  ‘I wanted to keep you up to date and say thank you again.

  ‘What about your case?’

  ‘It’s going very slowly.’

  Half an hour later, as he expected, it was the editor of the morning newspaper wanting to speak to him.

  ‘Another message?’

  ‘Yes. Except that this one didn’t come by post, but was put in our letterbox.’

  ‘Is it long?’

  ‘Quite long. The envelope says: “To be given to the author of Saturday’s article about the crime in Rue Popincourt.”’

  ‘In block letters again?’

  ‘He seems to write very fluently like that. Shall I read it to you?’

  ‘If you would be so kind.’

  Dear sir,

  I have read your most recent articles, in particular the one on Saturday, and while I cannot judge their literary value, I have a sense that you are really seeking the truth. The same cannot be said of some of your colleagues, who seek sensations, print anything at all and then contradict themselves the next day

  But I have one reproach to make to you. In the course of your last article you speak of the ‘lunatic’ in Rue Popincourt. Why that word, which is insulting first of all, and which also implies a judgement? Because there were seven knife blows? Probably, because you say later on that the murderer struck like a madman.

  Do you know that with words of this kind you can do a lot of harm? Some situations are painful enough in themselves without being judged superficially.

  It reminds me of that minister of the interior, not so long ago, talking about a fifteen-year-old boy and using the word ‘monster’, which of course the whole of the press picked up.

  I don’t ask to be treated with kid gloves. I know that people only see me as a killer. But I would like not to be troubled in addition by words that probably exceed the thoughts of those who use them.

  Otherwise, thank you for your objectivity.

  I can tell you that I have telephoned Detective Chief Inspector Maigret. He seemed understanding, and one is inclined to confide in him. But to what extent does his job not oblige him to play a part, if not to set traps?

  I think I will phone him again. I feel very tired. Tomorrow, however, I’m going to go back to work at the office. I’m an ordinary paper pusher.

  On Saturday I attended Antoine Batille’s funeral. I saw his father, his mother and his sister. I would like them to know that I had no complaints about their son. I didn’t know him. I had never seen him. I am sincerely repentant about the harm I have done them.

  Yours sincerely.

  ‘Shall I publish it?’

  ‘I don’t see any reason not to. On the contrary. It will encourage him to write again, and in each letter we learn a bit more. When you’ve been able to photocopy the letter, please be so kind as to send it to me. You don’t need to have it brought by messenger.’

  The phone call didn’t come until 12.30, when Maigret wondered whether he should go for lunch.

  ‘I suppose you’re calling me from a café or a bar near your office?’

  ‘That’s right. Are you in a hurry?’

  ‘I was about to leave for lunch.’

  ‘Didn’t you know that I was going to call you?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Have you read my letter? I suspected that they would phone you. That’s why I didn’t send you a copy.’

  ‘You need the public to read your words, don’t you?’

  ‘I’d like them not to get the wrong idea. Because a person has killed, people get the wrong idea about him. You do too, probably.’

  ‘You know, I’ve seen a lot of them.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘In the days of forced labour, some people used to write to me from Guyana. Others, once their sentence is over, sometimes come and see me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Do you feel a bit better?’

  ‘I don’t know. In any case, this morning, I was able to work more or less normally. It’s strange to think that these same people who treat me quite naturally would become completely different if I just uttered one little phrase.’

  ‘Do you want to utter it?’

  ‘There are times when I have to restrain myself. With my office manager, for example, who looks down on me.’

  ‘Were you born in Paris?’

  ‘No. In a small provincial town, I won’t tell you which one, because it would help you to identify me.’

  ‘What did your father do?’

  ‘He’s head accountant in a … let’s say quite an important company. Their right-hand man, you understand. The idiot that the bosses can keep there until ten o’clock at night and make him come in on Saturday afternoon if not Sunday.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She’s in poor health. As far back as I go in my memories, I always see her ill. Apparently it started after I was born.’

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No. For that very reason. She still keeps the house, which is very clean. When I went to school, I was one of the best turned out among the pupils too.

  ‘My parents are proud people. They would have liked me to become a lawyer, or a doctor. I’d had enough of studying. Then they thought I would go into the company that my father works for, which is the biggest company in the town. I didn’t want to stay there. I felt I was suffocating. I came to Paris.’

  ‘Where you’re suffocating in an office, aren’t you?’

  ‘Except that as soon as I leave no one knows me. I’m free.’

  He was talking more easily, more naturally than the last time. He was less frightened. There were fewer silences.

  ‘What do you think of me?’

  ‘Didn’t you ask me that already?’

  ‘I’m talking about me in general. Disregarding Rue Popincourt.’

  ‘I think there are tens, hundreds of thousands of people in a similar situation.’

  ‘Most of them are married and have children.’

  ‘Why aren’t you married? Because of your condition?’

  ‘Do you really mean what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Every word?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t understand you. You aren’t how I imagined a detective chief inspector with the Police Judiciaire would be.’

  ‘It’s the same with everybody. Even at Quai des Orfèvres, we’re all different from each other.’

  ‘What I really don’t understand is what you told me last time. You claimed you’d be able to identify me within twenty-four hours.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we’re face to face.’

  ‘What reason do you have not to get on with it and arrest me straight away?’

  ‘And what if I asked you what your reason was for killing?’

  There was a silence even more troubling than the others, and Maigret wondered if he had gone too far.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry for being harsh. You must face the facts.’

  ‘I know. That’s what I’m trying to do, believe me. Perhaps you imagine that I write for the papers and I’m calling you because I need to talk about me. Basically it’s because it’s all so wrong!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘What people think. The questions I’ll be asked by the court if I’m ever brought to trial. The summing-up by the assistant public prosecutor. And even, perhaps especially, the plea by my lawyer.’

&
nbsp; ‘Are you already thinking that far ahead?’

  ‘You have to.’

  ‘Are you planning on handing yourself in?’

  ‘You think I’ll be doing that soon, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll be relieved?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘I’ll be locked up in a cell and treated like …’

  He didn’t finish his sentence, and Maigret avoided intervening.

  ‘I don’t want to keep you longer. Your wife will be waiting for you.’

  ‘I’m sure she won’t be getting impatient. She’s used to it.’

  Silence again. It was as if he couldn’t bring himself to break the line that connected him to another man.

  ‘Are you happy?’ he asked shyly, as if obsessed by the question.

  ‘Relatively happy. That is to say, as happy as a man can be.’

  ‘I’ve never been happy since the age of fourteen, not for a day, an hour, a minute.’

  He abruptly changed his tone.

  ‘Thank you.’

  And he hung up.

  In the afternoon Maigret had to go up to Poiret’s office.

  ‘How is your investigation coming along?’ he asked with the hint of impatience common to all examining magistrates.

  ‘It’s practically over.’

  ‘Does that mean you know the murderer?’

  ‘He called me again this morning.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  Maigret took from his pocket the enlarged photograph of a face taken in the crowd, in the sun on Quai d’Anjou.

  ‘Is it this young man?’

  ‘He’s not all that young. He’s about thirty.’

  ‘Have you arrested him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘I don’t know his name or his address. If I published this photograph, people who see him every day, his colleagues, his concierge – whoever – would recognize him and immediately tell me.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  ‘That’s the question that’s troubling him too, and which he asked me for the second time this morning.’

  ‘Had he called you already?’

  ‘On Saturday, yes.’

  ‘You realize, inspector, the responsibility that you’re assuming. And in any case it’s a responsibility that I share indirectly now that I’ve seen this photograph. I don’t like that.’